Johnny Cueto has been invoked frequently of late as a likely trade target for contending teams. The combination of his pending free agency and the Reds’ own disappointments makes the probability quite high that he’ll change clubs before the end of the month. Whichever team trades for the Cincinnati Reds’ ace is going to get a pitcher on his way to having the best year of an already very good career. What factors, specifically, have led to his performance?

After above-average seasons from 2009 to 2011, Cueto broke out in 2012 with a 2.78 ERA, 3.27 FIP and 4.7 WAR in 217.0 innings. Injuries cut short his 2013 season, but Cueto came back last season and paced the National League with 243.1 innings pitched. He finished the season with a 2.33 ERA and 3.30 FIP, and he has continued to pitch well this season, producing a 2.73 ERA and 3.06 FIP which would be the lowest of his career.

Cueto has been aggressive in the strike zone, leading to a career-low 4.7% walk rate, but this approach has not cost him strikeouts: he’s produced a 24.3% strikeout rate, representing nearly the best figure of his career by that measure. Cueto is one of ten qualified pitchers this season with a strikeout rate exceeding 20% and a walk rate lower than 5%. Only Max Scherzer, Michael Pineda, and Jason Hammel better Cueto in both categories. Cueto’s percentage of pitches thrown in the strike zone is above 50% for the first time in his career. The charts below of the strike-zone maps for 2012-2014 and 2015 show Cueto’s evolution as a strike-thrower.

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The Blue Jays are a pretty good team. Sometimes they look like a very good team, and with an upgrade or two, they might get to that level consistently. There’s a decent shot this is the team that busts the extended franchise playoff slump, and with the trade deadline around the corner, you know the front office is active. They’ve been open about the activity, and you can see where upgrades would be wanted. Because of the Blue Jays’ situation, I’ve long been fascinated by the idea of a Johnny Cueto/Aroldis Chapman addition for a package built around Jeff Hoffman and Daniel Norris. And then more, presumably. Extreme seller’s market and everything.

From an outsider’s perspective, it would be a blockbuster. It would change the landscape of the American League now, and it could shift the Reds’ future fortunes. That said, there are a few hurdles. For the Jays, Norris could conceivably help in 2015. It’s also not impossible to imagine Hoffman making a difference in the bullpen down the stretch. And for the Reds, if you deal Chapman, that subtracts from 2016, and then that takes you to a slippery slope. The Reds might not want to go that far. If they had their druthers, they’d move rentals and try to get back at it a year from now.

So maybe that’s not so realistic. Maybe the Reds don’t want to tear down. And maybe the Jays don’t want to take anything at all away from 2015. The idea could use some restructuring. Which brings us to something I’m going to hate: I absolutely love the guy, but, imagine if the Jays were to dangle Marcus Stroman.

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Monday, against the Twins, Billy Hamilton stole four bases. In so doing, he reached 40 steals on the year before anyone else reached 30. Probably even more impressive: Hamilton now has more steals than exactly half the teams in baseball. He has more than the White Sox and Dodgers combined. Over the course of the past month, Hamilton has stolen 20 bases, and second and third place on the leaderboard combined have stolen 19 bases. Over that same month, Hamilton has more stolen bases than he has hits.

It’s funny now to reflect on some of the things I wrote in 2014. Early on, when Hamilton started to hit, I decided he wasn’t a caricature. When it all ended, I asked why Hamilton hadn’t been a base-stealing dynamo. Now Hamilton is a base-stealing dynamo. And he’s a terrible hitter. He can’t hit, but he does run, and when he’s on the other side of things, he can play a mean center field. Which means, in a way, Billy Hamilton now is something of a caricature. He’s an exaggeration of a player type, which is exactly how he was advertised.

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Joey Votto is a passive hitter. Over the last five seasons, he’s swung at around 40% of the pitches that have been thrown in his general direction. During that same span, the average hitter swung at 45-46% of pitches he faced. Over 2,500 pitches, that’s a difference of about 125 swings, or something like 0.77 swings per game. Despite the fact that Votto is one of the most conservative swingers in the league, one fewer swing than an average hitter per game makes the difference appear small.

Commentators and fans have frequently criticized Votto’s approach. He’s paid more than $22 million per year and many people equate that kind of money with power hitters who collect RBI. The criticism of Votto is that if he were less concerned about his own statistics (read: walks) and was more willing to put the ball in play, his team would score more runs. Votto’s an on-base machine because he has an excellent eye and derives a good portion of his value from reaching via the walk. This isn’t new information and the criticism has been ongoing for at least a few seasons.

The advanced stat community has defended Votto because he’s an excellent offensive player and there isn’t a lot of evidence that his club would be better off if he were more aggressive — and Votto himself has voiced similar opinions. Votto argues that if he was more aggressive, his overall value to the team would decline even if his home run or RBI totals went up. Based on the evidence we’ve compiled over the last couple of decades, it seems like he’s right. The funny thing is, in 2015, Votto is actually walking less and his results have been terrific. Did Votto listen to the critics?

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It seems like a simple question to ask. Which recent home run was the least likely?

You could flippantly answer — the one Erick Aybar hit this year, or the one Melky Cabrera hit this year — and because they’ve got the lowest isolated slugging percentages with at least one homer hit, you would be right. But that doesn’t control for the quality of the pitcher. Aybar hit his off of Rick Porcello, who is having some issues with the home run right now.

A slightly more sophisticated approach might have you scan down the list of the worst isolated powers in the game right now, and then cross-reference those names with the pitchers that allowed those home runs. If you do that, you’ll eventually settle on Alexei Ramirez, who hit his first homer of the year off of Johnny Cueto earlier this year.

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Blind comparisons are always fun. They’re fun because we have set notions about who players are, and when we strip away names, similarities that we didn’t think possible come to the surface. With that said, here are two players:

Player A, as you might have guessed by the title of the article, is Todd Frazier. Player B — he of the lower ISO and almost exact same strikeout and walk rates — is Josh Donaldson. An oft-used term is “the poor man’s version of so and so,” but currently, Frazier isn’t the poor man’s version of anyone — in fact, he’s been one of the best players in baseball through the first two months of the season. Donaldson is too, and he probably plays a little better defense than Frazier does.

However, the Reds third baseman is up there: he has almost the same WAR (3.8) as Mike Trout (3.9), and his current ISO is third only to Bryce Harper and Giancarlo Stanton’s. That doesn’t mean Frazier will finish this season with the same WAR as Trout, or the same ISO as Harper or Stanton, but it’s interesting and requires our attention.

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Aroldis Chapman has struck out more than one-third of the hitters he’s faced this season, a phenomenal number for most pitchers. For Chapman, however, that number represents a major drop from his incredible 2014 season when he struck out more than half the batters he faced. When he gave up a game-tying three-run home run to Philadelphia Phillies rookie Maikel Franco last night, it represented the first home run he’d given up in more than a calendar year. Now is hardly the time to panic over one of the best relievers in the majors, but there are some concerns over his most recent performances. Chapman is still throwing the ball hard (although not quite as hard), and he got off to a great start in 2015. Over his last half-dozen appearances, however, he hasn’t been able to get the ball in the strike zone. Hitters have picked up on his lack of command and since taking a week-long break in the middle of May due to a Cincinnati losing streak, Chapman’s performance has suffered.

Relievers are constantly under a microscope due both to the limited number of appearances they make and the relative importance of those appearances, but it can be difficult to decipher problems over the course of the whole season due to limited innings, let alone a couple weeks. Chapman could be pitching just as he always has and gotten a few bad results. He could be going through a tiny rough patch in an otherwise great season. Something could be seriously wrong, and we are seeing glimpses of its beginnings. Knowing precisely what Chapman’s problem has been over the last few weeks is near impossible. We’re picking up bread crumbs in an enclosed room. We can glean information from those crumbs, but we do not yet know where those crumbs lead. It’s too early.

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Sometimes, I feel like I have to set these things up. This isn’t one of those times. The other day, Bryce Harper batted against Aroldis Chapman. Who wouldn’t want to examine that plate appearance in detail? We’re talking about the game’s premier one-inning pitcher, a guy who does something that might never have been done before, and then you’ve got the hottest hitter on the planet, a guy whose at-bats are worth setting alerts for if you’re not already tuned the hell in. Yeah, they’ve matched up before. Yeah, Chapman struck Harper out all three times, on a combined 10 pitches. That was that Bryce Harper. This is this Bryce Harper. Or, as you might know him, Bryce Harper.

The evening: Friday, May 29. The setting: nobody cares. This is about the individuals, not the circumstance, and while the leverage could’ve been higher, the game was close enough everyone was trying their hardest. This was about something other than deciding the score. This was arguably the game’s most watchable hitter and arguably the game’s most watchable pitcher. So you know they had to combine for a watchable matchup.

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It’s been known for a while that the Reds are in a difficult place. Stuck somewhere between contending and rebuilding, they’ve had good talent — but not enough of it — and it figured they’d have to make some decisions in 2015. There was sense in trying to win — in this wild-card era, it doesn’t take much — but, failing that, tearing down appeared to be the right course. And while it’s not like the outcome has already been determined, the 2015 Reds are coming into focus.

And they’re not great. Nor are they good. And at a few games below .500, it doesn’t seem like this is the year. Odds are, these Reds aren’t going to win the World Series. Now, to be fair, the World Series odds work against every team, and that’s not always a reason to sell off valuable pieces. But, for the Reds, this is Johnny Cueto‘s contract year. Next year is Aroldis Chapman’s contract year. Doesn’t make much sense to keep Cueto if you’re not contending down the stretch. And without Cueto for 2016, it’??s tougher to see Chapman belonging. Contention-wise, the Reds aren’t in a good position. But trade-wise, they’ve got some power.

Since the end of the winter, we’ve been waiting to see where the Phillies might send Cole Hamels. The rest of the trade market has been relatively unclear, because pretty much every other team had better chances of playing competitive baseball than this year’s Phillies. We have heard recently that the Brewers are somewhat open for business. The Rockies seem open to mixing things up, even if those things don’t yet include Troy Tulowitzki. But the Reds could offer two of the premier pieces. Cueto’s as good as almost any other starter. Chapman’s definitely as good as any other reliever. In one course, they could be dealt separately; in another, they could be packaged.

So it leads you to the question: What might the Reds be able to get back for their ace starter and their ace closer?

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It probably doesn’t shock you to learn that the three best hitting Reds so far this year all play the infield. Based on what you know about the Reds, it’s only slightly shocking to learn that Jay Bruce isn’t in the team’s top three in wRC+, but Todd Frazier and Joey Votto are obviously right up there and Brandon Phillips, while sometimes overrated, isn’t a bad hitter. Except Brandon Phillips isn’t number three on the list. That was a test. It’s actually Zack Cozart and his 127 wRC+ through 144 PA this year.

As a learned baseball fan, you’re immediately jumping to the conclusion that Cozart has had a nice little run during the first couple months of the season, but there is simply no way he’s actually this good. It’s a totally defensible position to weigh Cozart’s first 1,799 PA from 2011-2014 more highly than the 144 from 2015. That’s just good science. Entering 2015 you had an opinion about how good Cozart is at hitting and 36 games isn’t going to change that.

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