I was invited to appear on Ben Lindbergh and Michael Baumann’s podcast over at The Ringer this week. Among those topics discussed was the challenge of scouting in today’s game (a topic which Jeff Sullivan has recently explored) and the difficulty with macro-level planning in the midst of a record home-run surge (about which I wrote earlier this week).

The game is being played at the extremes, featuring more home runs than ever and more strikeouts than ever. When players are changing skill sets and approaches so quickly, how must evaluators evolve? While speed and strength will never go out of style, what skills should gain and lose value in the eyes of evaluators? Michael noted that perhaps it’s adaptability that should take on greater weight in evaluation. In an era where it’s more difficult to predict what’s next, anticipating how the game (or the ball) will change might be a player’s best tool.

Along those lines, it might behoove evaluators to place more weight on players who are curious. In an age with endless data from Statcast and other sources, asking the right questions can help an athlete better understand and improve his own performance. That’s trickier to evaluate, of course: it requires getting to know the individual and/or performing other types of due diligence. But those traits can make an impact.

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On August 1st, our Playoff Odds gave the Twins a 3.6% chance of winning one of the two AL Wild Card spots. The team had briefly flirted with contending, acquiring Jaime Garcia from the Braves, but then they flipped him to the Yankees a week later when the team began to struggle. They also traded away closer Brandon Kintzler to the Nationals, acknowledging that the team’s strong first half was probably not going to end with a postseason berth.

But despite the front office’s rational evaluation of their team’s abilities, the Twins have actually gotten better in the second half, and with their strong play the last six weeks, have now put themselves in prime position to capture a Wild Card spot.

How have the Twins turned their season around after selling at the deadline? By finally not hitting like the Twins.

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Rarely do the graphs line up as nicely as they do for Twins shortstop Jorge Polanco, who changed his season — and maybe his baseball future — on a dime. Over a span of 310 plate appearances leading up to the end of July, he’d recorded a slash line of .213/.265/.305, a mark roughly 50% worse than average after adjusting for park and league. In the 170 plate appearances since then, however, he’s produced a .347/.409/.626 mark, 70% better than league average. There’s been some batted-ball fortune maybe, but that hardly accounts for the enormity of the improvement in the numbers.

While the change in outcome has been significant, the change in process has been relatively simple. Polanco has basically followed three steps to rethink his approach, allowing the former top prospect to regain his standing with the team.

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Byron Buxton’s torrid August has been the primary reason the Twins have vaulted back into the Wild Card race this month, as the team’s center fielder is again showing why he was previously considered the best prospect in baseball. But while it’s very easy to draw a straight line between Buxton’s performance and the team’s 17-10 record in August, he isn’t doing this alone; there’s another guy on the roster whose performance has changed even more dramatically. And that guy is Matt Belisle.

After having a nice run with the Rockies in his early-30s, Belisle became the quintessential journeyman reliever the last few years, signing one year deals with the Cardinals, Nationals, and now the Twins. Those one year deals paid him between $1.25M and $3.5M per year, and despite running a 1.76 ERA with Washington last year, the Twins got him for just $2 million this past winter. As a pitch-to-contact 37-year-old, there just wasn’t much interest in Belisle despite last year’s shiny ERA.

And for the first three months of the year, the league looked prescient. When June came to a close, Belisle had a 6.53 ERA/5.17 FIP/5.53 xFIP. He was pitching himself out of baseball, as if the Twins released him, he might not get another chance, given his age and lack of ability to put batters away. An aging command guy with a 12% walk rate isn’t something many teams want.

But then, at the beginning of July, Belisle started doing something weird, for him; he started striking everyone out.

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The Twins demoted a struggling Byron Buxton, once the consensus top prospect in the game, twice last season.

The first occasion was on April 25th, after 17 games and 13 starts. Buxton was batting .156. The Twins dispatched Buxton again to Rochester, N.Y., on August 6th after Buxton had played in 63 games — 59 starts — and was slashing .193/.247/.315.

On April 25th of this season, Buxton was again struggling mightily, batting .133.

After a strong finish last season, he had issues right out of the gate this season.

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Allow me to revisit something I wrote about yesterday. For the first sustained period in his major-league career, Byron Buxton has shown the ability to hit for some contact. It doesn’t mean he’s totally fixed, and he’s gone through his hot streaks before, but, with Buxton, we’re always looking for a reason to get excited. This is a new one, and in part because of Buxton doing a better job at the plate, the Twins are in wild-card position. It’s a close race, and I can practically guarantee you there’s going to be further jostling, but before the year began, we projected the Twins to be one of the worst teams in the American League. They’re poised to go to the playoffs. Outside of the mood around trade-deadline week, the year has been a fun one.

Allow me to revisit something I wrote about in May. Back then, when we were a month and a half into the season, there were promising signs up and down the Twins lineup, at least as far as plate discipline was concerned. There were suggestions of a team-wide improvement, which was sufficiently remarkable to catch my eye. The samples then were fairly small. They’re not so small anymore. Twins hitters have taken some steps. Buxton isn’t alone — something seems to be clicking, which has helped allow the Twins to get to where they are today.

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Regardless of whether you believe that they’re good, the Twins are presently sitting in a would-be playoff position. In a crowded field for the American League’s second wild card, the Twins are alone in front, even after having sold off a closer and re-gifted a starter. That the Twins sold pieces is as good an indication as any that they didn’t expect to be here, but here they are, a team with a chance. Most of the AL teams count as teams with a chance, but who are the Twins to deny themselves an opportunity?

There’s no such thing as an organizational plan that revolves around three players, and yet there’s nothing more valuable than a young and cost-controlled star. For that reason, so much of the Twins’ greater outlook seems to depend on the development of Miguel Sano, Jose Berrios, and Byron Buxton. Last year’s Twins lost 103 games, with those three players combining for 2.6 WAR. This year’s Twins are vying for the one-game playoff, with those same three players combining already for 6.5 WAR. Very obviously, there’s been more that’s gone on. But the core has been more promising than not, with Buxton now making another attempt to emerge.

I don’t need to tell you about Buxton’s prospect pedigree. I don’t need to remind you that we’ve been teased by Buxton before. Great players have great whole seasons; talented players have great whole months. Buxton’s more of the latter than the former, but of late, he has shown something new. Buxton is teasing again, in a different way.

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Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League Central. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Chicago White Sox (Preseason List)

1. Yoan Moncada, 2B
2. Eloy Jimenez, OF
3. Michael Kopech, RHP
4. Lucas Giolito, RHP
5. Luis Robert, OF
6. Reynaldo Lopez, RHP
7. Blake Rutherford, OF
8. Alec Hansen, RHP
9. Dylan Cease, RHP
10. Zack Collins, C

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We’re at a point in the season when you can reasonably split the data into two halves. In terms of reliability for batted-ball metrics, 50 balls in play is a good sample, and the majority of regular position players have produced that many since the first of July, more or less. If you look at exit velocity in two halves, Miguel Sano’s name jumps off the list. In a bad way. But why?

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Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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