Going into this trade deadline season, you might have thought that the Mets could use a fifth starter, or a center fielder with good glove and bat combo, or a third baseman, but instead they went and got another corner outfielder when they traded 22-year-old infielder Dilson Herrera and another minor leaguer for the Reds’ Jay Bruce.

Since the Mets have an affordable $13m option on Bruce next season, it may be a look ahead in case Yoenis Cespedes opts out of his contract. But in the meantime, Bruce makes for an uneasy fit on this roster. Sort of. Because he’s also perfect for the team, in that he’s just like the rest of the team. He makes them more like themselves.

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University of Nevada CF and member of the USA Collegiate National Team T.J. Friedl is expected to sign a lucrative NDFA (non-drafted free agent) deal with the Cincinnati Reds. Friedl, a redshirt sophomore in 2016, was eligible to be drafted in June but, due to confusion with how he was listed on Nevada’s roster, the industry — and, rumor has it, Friedl himself — was unaware that he was draft-eligible. Only once Friedl began to make waves this summer with Team USA did scouts begin to look into his background and realize that he had slipped through the cracks and was eligible to sign.

Of course, NDFA’s that sign for over $100,000 count against the signing club’s draft bonus pool and as bidding for Friedl began to heat up, many teams had no room to make a run at him. The Reds had around $700K worth of money to spend without incurring heavy penalties for exceeding their pool limit, and indeed I’ve heard anything from $500-$750K as the likely amount here, with more sources indicating the number is toward the low end of that range. Tampa Bay was also heavily involved in negotiations with Friedl.

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You’ve undoubtedly heard about the Chapman blockbuster by now. Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen gave his take on the prospects involved. Below, I outline what my newly revamped KATOH projection system thinks about the youngsters headed to the Yankees. I also go on to compare that group to the group the Yankees sent to Cincinnati last December in exchange for Chapman’s services.

Note that I’ve included two types of KATOH projection. KATOH denotes the newest iteration of my projection system, outlined yesterday. KATOH+ denotes a version of that same thing which also accounts for Baseball America’s prospect rankings.

*****

Gleyber Torres, SS (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 5.6 WAR
KATOH+ Projection: 7.1 WAR

Although he’s just 19, Torres has been one of the more productive hitters in High-A this year. The Venezuelan shortstop is slashing .275/.359/.433 on the year, with an impressive nine homers and 19 steals. In addition to his offensive exploits, Torres plays an uber-premium position and plays it well.

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Last week, I wrote about the disproportionate impact a disastrous April can have on our perceptions of a player. The example I used then was Ken Giles, who has largely put an awful first month of the season behind him and returned to being a dominant reliever. Now seems like as good a time as any to talk about another player who struggled mightily in April: Joey Votto.

As Owen Watson pointed out at the time, April was the worst month of Votto’s career. His slash line was an almost unfathomably awful .224/.320/.306. Votto is one of the precious few who fall into the category of perennial MVP candidates and, for better or worse, those players can’t post a 62 wRC+ through the first month of the season without generating countless inquiries to the effect of “What’s wrong?” or “Is this the start of his decline?” or “Hoo boy, just how bad is that contract?” However, if you’ve been watching the Reds this season, you (a) have my condolences and (b) can confirm that Joey Votto is, in fact, still Joey Votto.

The hitters over the past 30 days who’ve recorded a better wRC+ than Votto can be counted on one hand. His recent hot streak has helped catapult his season stats back to their expected level. He has resumed his rightful spot among league leaders in walks, trailing only Bryce Harper among qualified hitters in walk rate (17.2%). His .404 on-base percentage ranks third in the National League. His poor April is still depressing his season line somewhat, but he’s currently batting a reasonably Vottoian .271/.404/.475 with a 134 wRC+. Here’s his rebound in graph form:

Sure, he’s not reaching the astronomical heights of his phenomenal second half a year ago, but he has clearly managed to climb back towards his expected level of production. Now that we’re firmly back in a world where we don’t have to imminently ponder the mortality of one of the game’s best hitters, there are two questions worth asking: 1. How did he rebound? and 2. Is he really back in a sustainable way?

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Every year we go through the same routine. A previously unimpressive player has a couple great months and we wonder if we’re observing something new and meaningful or if it’s simply random variation and the regression monster is coming. I haven’t done a thorough analysis, but I’d imagine a larger percentage of articles written on sites like this during the first months contain the sentiment “This sure looks new and interesting, but it’s just too early to tell.”

Frequently, we don’t follow up on these analyses. There’s simply too much going on throughout the game and there usually isn’t much to add to the original article other than thumbs up or down. Last year, one such article that actually merited a follow-up was this one concerning Zack Cozart’s best 40 games. After three seasons of well below-average offense, the slick-fielding shortstop was crushing the ball into late May. I pointed out that Cozart seemed to have developed a new approach that generated harder contact and more pulled fly balls, which was supported by some comments by Cozart himself regarding a conversation he’d had with Barry Larkin during Spring Training.

Three weeks after the article appeared on the site, Zack Cozart suffered a nasty right-knee injury and was sidelined for the remainder of the season. That meant I would have to wait more than a full calendar year to approach a sufficiently large sample to determine if Cozart had really improved or if we were looking at some well-timed good fortune. Thirteen months after Cozart’s knee gave out, we have our answer: Zack Cozart can hit.

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Most All-Stars weren’t born into baseball this way. Most of them had to alter their approach, or their mechanics, in order to find that a-ha moment. They threw a pitch differently, or decided to pull the ball more, or changed their swing, and then found a run of sustained success that put them in the All-Star game that’s being played tonight.

So, given fairly fettered access to the All-Stars from both leagues, that was the question I posed: what was the big adjustment, mechanical or approach-wise, that brought you to this podium today?

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Jay Bruce is going to be traded. That’s a near-certainty. He’s the only player on this year’s market to be (almost) traded not once, but twice by the team for which he still plays. The rumors have been persisting for more than a year now. Bruce is in the last guaranteed year of his contract, the Reds were never in contention, and he’s rebuilt his value with a great first half at the plate. Already, we’ve heard Bruce linked again to the Blue Jays, alongside the Indians, Nationals, Dodgers, and others. It will be an upset if he finishes the season wearing a Cincinnati uniform.

That much about Jay Bruce, we can be confident. We can be confident that he’s been a good hitter in the past, we can be confident that he’s been a good hitter in the present, and we can be confident that he’s likely to be moved within the next month. There exists an area of Bruce’s story that’s far more murky, though, and one’s perception of that area of Bruce’s game goes a long way towards one’s evaluation of Bruce. Despite a 120 wRC+ this season, Bruce has been worth 0.0 WAR, according to our calculations and 0.4 WAR by Baseball-Reference’s, and that’s all due to his defensive numbers.

The defensive numbers hate Jay Bruce this year. Ultimate Zone Rating calls him the season’s worst defensive right fielder, among 21 qualifiers. Defensive Runs Saved has him in a tie for last, with J.D. Martinez. Those negative marks stretch back a couple years now, but then you get recent tweets like this from Jeff Passan:

Bruce is 29 and has very reasonable club option at $13M for 2017. D metrics don’t like him, but two scouts say he’s avg to slightly > in RF.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 1, 2016

And quotes like this out of Buster Olney columns:

Bruce’s defensive metrics are not good, but some scouts believe that he’s better than those numbers indicate, and wonder if his skills are properly reflected in the stats — which some evaluators believe may be inexact.

And you begin to sense a divide on the evaluation of Bruce’s defensive ability. And it’s an important divide, because a Bruce with average-to-better defense is a useful player. A Bruce closer to what the defensive metrics suggest is a replacement-level designated hitter. Those two players fetch far different returns in a mid-season trade.

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Jay Bruce’s tenure with the Reds has reached the kids in the back seat asking “Are we there, yet?” stage. It feels like he should have been traded a while ago, yet here is, again a trade target and again a player Cincinnati can move to help its rebuilding process. The team has a $13 million option on Bruce for next year, so they theoretically still control him for another year and a half. That said, now is really the time the Reds need to trade him.

Figuring out when the Reds could have traded Bruce isn’t difficult. Determining if they should have is more so. Jay Bruce signed his current contract back before the 2011 season. The deal guaranteed him $51 million, buying out his arbitration years and potentially three years of free agency. The Reds were coming off a division-winning season, and while the 2011 season was disappointing, the team made the playoffs in 2012 and 2013. Heading into the 2014 season, the Reds had reasonable expectations of contending.

That edition of the Reds featured one of the best players in baseball, Joey Votto; a still decent Brandon Phillips; a nice, young player in Todd Frazier; and promising guys like Devin Mesoraco and Billy Hamilton, who were potentially ready to step forward. With a rotation of Johnny Cueto, Mat Latos, Homer Bailey, Mike Leake, and Alfredo Simon — and Tony Cingrani with Aroldis Chapman in the ninth — the team looked like it might have a decent shot at postseason contention. At the very least, there wasn’t the obvious need to blow things up and rebuild. The 2014 season proceeded to become a bit of a disaster, however. Votto got hurt, Phillips got worse, Bailey and Latos couldn’t pitch full seasons, and Jay Bruce had the worst year of his career, putting up a wRC+ of 78, a 40-point drop from his previous four seasons.

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Last night, Kris Bryant became the first player in Major League history to hit three home runs and two doubles in the same game. His offensive barrage was part of a five homer attack by the Cubs — Jake Arrieta and Anthony Rizzo also went yard last night — in their 11-8 win over the Reds. But while Bryant’s game was indeed spectacular, we also shouldn’t be too surprised that it came in Cincinnati, because the Reds staff is allowing dingers like no pitching staff in baseball history.

Through 77 games, the Reds have allowed 129 home runs, 23 more than any other team has allowed this season. That works out to 1.7 homers allowed per game, a pace that would shatter the all-time record for home runs allowed if the Reds were to keep serving longballs at this rate. The title of the most homer-prone pitching staff in history currently belongs to the 1996 Detroit Tigers, who allowed 241 homers, or a rate of 1.5 homers per game. They edged out the 2000 Royals, 2001 Rockies, and 1999 Rockies, all of whom were attempting to pitch during the height of baseball’s “Steroid Era”, when home run records were falling left and right.

To break the record, the Reds would have to allow 113 home runs over their remaining 85 games, a 1.3 home run per game pace that would be somewhat formidable for most pitching staffs. But for this particular group of hurlers, it’s actually not that hard to imagine them breaking the record.

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When Cody Reed takes the mound on Saturday he’ll likely be wearing the same pair of rec specs he’s worn since his sophomore year of high school. Reed donned the glasses after he had a hard time picking up signs from his catcher — especially during night games — as a freshman and has continued to wear them as a pro. Though, when Reed is pitching well, it’s opposing hitters who look like they could use a pair.

Reed was a late second-rounder out of Northwest Mississippi Community College in 2013. At the time the industry thought there was a good chance he’d just end up as a reliever. There was arm strength, there was an above-average slider, but the strike-throwing and changeup were both behind, and Reed’s firebrand mound presence had many considering him a potential closer. Now the velocity remains but the slider, and Reed’s usage of it, has improved — as has the changeup. He still has some issues throwing strikes, but things have progressed enough in that area that instead of his control dictating whether or not he starts or relieves, it’s going to dictate just how good of a starter he’s going to be.

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