July 15th was a good-news, bad-news kind of night for the Cincinnati Reds. On the one hand, they won their sixth-straight contest. On the other, that was the night they lost their star first baseman, Joey Votto, to a knee injury that would keep him out for at least a month. At that point, it was reasonable to think the Reds might backslide a little. And when Cincinnati lost two of their next three games that seemed like an even more reasonable line of thinking. Then the Reds decided to stop losing baseball games, and their now season-best winning streak stands at 10 games as they begin a four-game set with the lowly Padres this evening.

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Aroldis Chapman is hot. His fastball tops 100 mph. His slider is nearly unhittable. And he’s on the verge of breaking two strikeout records.

In 47.2 innings pitched through Wednesday, the Reds closer has racked up 16.99 strikeouts per nine innings, the highest in the majors this season for pitchers with at least 30 innings under their belt. In July, in 11.1 innings pitched, his strikeouts per nine innings has jumped to 20.65.

But it’s not just the number of strikeouts he’s recorded. It’s the lethal efficiency with which he’s dispensed with his adversaries. Chapman has struck out nearly half the batters he’s faced this season, posting a 49.7 strikeout rate through Wednesday. He’s faced 181 batters. He’s struck out 90 of them. In July alone, Chapman’s strikeout rate is at 65%. Forty batters faced. Twenty-six strikeouts. Oh, and he has a negative FIP for July.

Look at those numbers again and let them sink in. Almost unfathomable.

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I’ve written quite a bit this year on trends in pitcher aging, specifically velocity loss and gain. In the last iteration I focused on the odds of pitchers gaining velocity back after a season where their fastball dropped by at least 1 mph.

In that piece I listed a few pitchers to keep your eye on given that their velocity was down from 2011. In June, I wrote about CC Sabathia for ESPN and noted that the big lefty is likely beginning to “age”, as the odds are quite a bit higher that pitchers over the age of 30 do not gain their velocity back once they’ve lost it.

After thinking about it a while it occurred to me that there is of course the chance that these pitchers will gain their velocity back by the end of the year (as I noted in both pieces). We know that, generally speaking, pitchers gain velocity as the season goes on. Temperatures rise, and so too do fastball velocities. If this is the case I wondered at what point in the season we can say with greater certainty that a pitcher is throwing as hard as he is going to throw. Is there a particular month where a velocity decline is more likely to translate to or predict a full season velocity decline?
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On Sunday, Barry Larkin will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Larkin was the star shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds from 1986 through 2004. It is said that he revolutionized the shortstop position, particularly in the National League, by combining steady hitting, power, speed and excellent defense. Among players who played shortstop their entire careers, Larkin compiled 2,340 hits, ranking him fourth; he hit 198 home runs, ranking him second behind Derek Jeter; and he stole 379 bases, ranking his sixth.

He was a twelve-time All-Star, and won nine Silver Slugger Awards and three Gold Glove Awards. In 1995, he was voted as the National League’s Most Valuable Player.

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With yet another day to go before actual baseball returns to the field, I thought I would take a quick look at some of the potential MVP candidates in both leagues based on the first half of the season.

Identifying MVP candidates is certainly not a straightforward process, nor is the criteria universally agreed upon. Knowing this I will not begin or end this article with any claim to have identified the “proper” candidates. These are my candidates based on my way of looking at the term “valuable”.

So what is my criteria? Well, I like to think of MVPs as players that provide an exceptional amount of production in both an absolute and relative sense. This means identifying players that lead or are close to leading the league in production, but where there is also a sizable gap between their production and that of the second best player on their own team. This means that I do tend to discount great performances by players that happen to share the same uniform as equally great players. Is it their fault? Absolutely not. In fact, those players could likely be the best all around players in the entire league. But when it comes to value I think there is a relative component that should be considered. This isn’t to necessarily give credit to the player (i.e. they don’t “step it up” to make up for the gap in talent on the team), but rather to the performance itself.

Like I said, this is my criteria and I don’t claim that it should trump all others, nor would I say it is complete on it’s own. Rather, I think it’ a useful starting place.

Okay, enough with the preamble. Let’s get to the data.

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Fare thee well, father, mother. I’m off
to de-luck the f*** out of this s***.

With this All-Star break forcing to watch so little baseball, we now have a moment to drink up the frothy milkshake of statistics from the first half. So, you and I, we shall dissect the stats and find out who has been lucky, unlucky and a little of both.

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Each year, about 15 minutes after the excitement of seeing who was named to the All-Star Game has worn off, the next step we take is to start carping about who didn’t make it. It’s a summer rite of passage as old as the game itself. Here at FanGraphs, we’re no different, so let’s take a look at the snubbiest snubs that were snubbed.

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The minor leagues are a vast landscape of prospects, fillers and veterans. Each year, players from all three of those category impact the major leagues — sometimes for the better, sometimes not. But before they make their September callups or injury replacements, let us familiarize ourselves with some of the standouts.

International League (AAA)
IL Leaderboards

Brad Eldred (.374 OBP, .695 SLG, .465 wOBA, 197 wRC+)

The 31-year-old Eldred was slugging away in the Tigers minor league system (since released and playing in Japan). Like Dan Johnson (173 wRC+) with the White Sox, Eldred would have required multiple injuries before getting consideration at first base. The Tigers have both Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, while the Sox have a trio in Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko and now Kevin Youkilis. That cavalcade of injuries never came — nor an age of enlightenment in which Delmon Young is no longer a DH in Detroit — Eldred never got a steady shot with the Tigers.

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The Reds are three games up in the National League Central, despite the fact that they have been below average in more areas than they have been above average this season, but between adjustments (installing Todd Frazier as the everyday third baseman) and a scarcity of available upgrades at certain positions (it would be difficult to find a shortstop substantially better than Zack Cozart) the number of areas that Cincinnati can make impactful upgrades to shrinks quickly. It would be nice if the Reds could acquire another starting pitcher, but while Reds’ starters have been short on star power, they have been solid across the board and a upgrade there may be tough to find. Given how well their bullpen has pitched, they may be fine if Mat Latos improves. That leaves two troublesome areas — center field and left field. If they want to be more than a one and done postseason team, they will need to upgrade at these two spots.

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Yesterday, the transformation from setup man to closer came full circle for Aroldis Chapman, as he protected a three-run lead for the Reds in earning his second career save. With the move, Sean Marshall has been consigned back to his former role of setup man. Marshall’s early failures however, don’t mean that he doesn’t have closer’s stuff.

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