Playing shortstop is a young man’s game. The list of top-tier shortstops age 25 and under in the game right now is so extensive that it’s impossible to pare down to a quick three- or four-name list without leaving off a potential future MVP. If you’re interested in fawning over those names and debating who among them is the most valuable, I’d recommend keeping an eye on Dave Cameron’s trade-value series this week. But right now, I want to talk about a guy who suddenly looks like a grizzled veteran next to the new wave of shortstop talent: 26-year-old Didi Gregorius.

Over the past month, Gregorius has been the most productive shortstop at the plate. Go back a bit further and you’ll find that, after struggling in the first month of the season, he’s posted an impressive 131 wRC+ since May 8th. On the season as a whole, though, his 109 wRC+ ranks a respectable, if uninspiring, 11th among shortstops behind eight (!) members of that 25-and-under age bracket. There’s no argument to be made that Gregorius is anything like the best shortstop in the game right now, but he is in the midst both of a remarkable stretch and also his finest overall season at the plate. He also has three more years of team control remaining, which makes it worth investigating to what extent this Gregorius breakout is for real.

The most obvious and, perhaps, the most fun part of Gregorius’ breakout has been his power surge. He’s recorded five home runs in his last 11 games, which has helped boost his ISO to a career high .169. He’s hardly the only shortstop to grow into power after a few seasons in the majors: Brandon Crawford and Zack Cozart followed a similar trajectory. Gregorius’ power is aided by the fact that he’s a left-handed hitter who gets to play half his games in Yankee Stadium. Unsurprisingly, his home/road power split is rather stark:.210 ISO at home, .132 on the road. If I were a team interested in acquiring Gregorius, this would be a concern, but unless the Yankees are planning to move anytime soon, they should feel comfortable accepting that Gregorius possesses the ability to make the most of his home ball park.

There is something about Gergorius’ newfound power, however, which necessitates pouring a bit of cold water on the idea that he’s tapped into a new ability which will help elevate him to a new level. Check out his season-by-season ISO:

Yes, Gregorius is hitting for more power and that’s a great thing, but he’s not alone. Power is up across the league and, rather than pulling ahead of the pack, Gregorius is merely keeping pace with league average. (Gregorius recorded only 21 plate appearances in that 2012 season, so the relevant start date for his ISO comparisons begins in 2013.) The power increase among shortstops is even more stark than the league-wide trend. Since 2014, the average ISO for shortstops across the league has risen from .113 to .151 — nearly forty points! So, yes, the new power is fun to watch, but it’s not going to alter substantially Gregorius’ standing in the league.

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It still seems like something of a mystery, how Bartolo Colon gets away with doing what he does. I mean, yeah, he throws a lot of fastballs, but they’re different types of fastballs. He’s also got impeccable command, and he understands the art of pitching to the point where he’s literally out there using the wind to his advantage. That all makes sense. But it’s still hard to fathom that a 43-year-old who pipes an 89-mph heater right down the middle on seemingly every pitch is now on year five of a career resurgence after effectively being out of the league at age 33.

Aroldis Chapman? Aroldis Chapman’s easy. Wanna know how Aroldis Chapman does what he does? Well, you see, he throws a baseball 103 mph. That’s it! Throw a baseball 103 mph one time and I can almost guarantee you that you will pitch in the big leagues. Chapman can do that, and he can do other stuff, too.

On the surface, there’s almost nothing similar about these guys. Colon’s 43 and he throws right-handed. Chapman’s 28 and he throws left-handed. Colon’s a starter, short and stocky. Chapman, a reliever, tall and lanky. From 2010 to -15, Colon struck out 17% of his batters and walked just 4%. Chapman over that same time struck out 43% and walked 12%. Polar opposites, these two.

The one thing at which Chapman has ever been below average is the walks; when he got in trouble, it’s because he wasn’t putting the ball over the plate. Putting the ball over the plate just so happens to be Colon’s biggest strength. It also just so happens to be the area where Chapman’s changed this year — he’s turned himself into a flamethrowing Bartolo Colon.

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The New York Yankees aren’t completely out of the 2016 postseason race, but they’re also not trending up. The team has done little this season to make anyone think they’re playoff-bound or anything more than a .500 team. Masahiro Tanaka has been good and CC Sabathia is having a nice bounce-back season, but Michael Pineda, Nathan Eovaldi, Luis Severino and Ivan Nova haven’t been able to keep the ball in the park, giving up 52 homers in 274.1 innings. On offense, the only above-average hitter is a 39-year-old Carlos Beltran, and he’s having trouble staying on the field. The strength of the team is an historically great bullpen, and if the team is willing to give up on this season, they could get quite a return over the next month by dealing Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and maybe even Dellin Betances.

The Yankees are currently 37-39 with a negative-34 run differential*. They’re nine games back in the division and six games out of the last wild-card spot, needing to pass six teams to get there. Our projections have them going 44-42 the rest of the way, thereby ending the year at exactly .500. BaseRuns says the Yankees have played like a team that should be 33-43. While the team’s peripheral pitching stats suggest the team has outperformed their results a little bit (4.43 ERA and 4.00 FIP), we’re still talking about a team that might be .500 if things had worked out better, not a team that looks like a contender. The team’s best playoff odds are likely behind them and the team has a roughly 6% chance at the postseason right now.

*Numbers before play on Wednesday.

So in all likelihood, the team should be sellers. That said, a team of veterans with long-term contracts doesn’t generally make for the most appealing trade partner. If he’s still healthy, Carlos Beltran should be in demand, and it’s possible that Nathan Eovaldi might bring something back, but the strength of the Yankees has been the bullpen, and if they’re going to sell, that’s where they’ll get the greatest return.

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Two opposing things can be true, I believe. Superstar players are probably the last to know when they’ve come to the end of the line. Declines can be so gradual they’re tough to detect if you’re just taking things day by day. If you listen to the players, they’ll insist they remain capable, even after they’re probably not. On the other side of the coin, no one loves to bury good players too early more than writers. We’ve all probably done it at some point. I did it way too early to Raul Ibanez. Countless people did it way too early to David Ortiz. We start looking for any signs of age-related decline, and then when one or two show up, we tend to assume that’s it. Good players know how to make adjustments. That’s what allows them to be good players.

So with Alex Rodriguez, right now, we’re…somewhere. Rodriguez says he’ll be okay, and he says he loves to prove doubters wrong. Not that Alex Rodriguez has much of a history of being doubted, but, anyway. Rodriguez has his pride, and he also has terrible numbers. He’s 40 years old! But then, the Yankees’ best hitter is 39 years old. It would be very easy to conclude that Rodriguez is finished. The Yankees have started to put him on the bench. We should probably be more patient — this is still Alex Rodriguez we’re talking about. The talent is in there. It’s just, the numbers paint a picture, and it’s a picture of a changed and worse ballplayer. That much cannot be argued.

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Conventional wisdom dictates that, when signing a free agent to a multi-year deal, the signing team will receive most of the value from that player at the beginning of his contract. Ideally, the team receives a surplus in the early stages of the agreement. But even then, as the player ages and declines, the club is likely to pay more than a the player is worth for the final years.

Given the effects of age-related decline, it was troubling when, after signing a three-year deal as a 37-year-old, Carlos Beltran proceeded to record a poor 2014 campaign. After Beltran began the 2015 season with a terrible April, at least one writer reasonably (foolishly?) wondered if Beltran was finished. He’s done nothing but hit since then.

In Carlos Beltran’s first 14 seasons, from 1998 to 2011, he played in nearly 1,800 games and hit .283/.361/.496, conspiring to produce a career 120 wRC+ as he entered his age-35 season. Then, just when he should have been exhibiting real signs of decline, he recorded a .282/.343/.493 and 127 wRC+ between 2012 and -13 with the Cardinals. His walk rate did decline a bit, but with the general suppression of offense in baseball, his performance relative to the league improved. While his defense no longer represented an asset, he had sufficiently staved off a decline on offense. So it’s not surprising that, when the Yankees gave him three years and $45 million before 2014, they had reason to believe that possessed at least one more good year in him.

It would be a bit melodramatic to call 2014 a disaster for Beltran, but the season didn’t go well. No stranger to a variety of maladies over his career, Beltran ended up on the disabled list for bone spurs in his right elbow in May, and then went on the seven-day DL in July due to a concussion he sustained when a batted ball hit him in practice. He hit .233/.301/.402 on the season, leading only to a 96 wRC+. While not so poor in itself, the battin line was coupled with poor base-running numbers and below-average defense in right field, leaving him with a negative WAR on the season. He had elbow surgery after the during the 2014-15 offseason to relieve the discomfort he was feeling, but the first month of 2015 could not have gone any worse.

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Can you name the starting pitcher with the lowest ERA in the month of May this year? If you paid attention to the Pitcher of the Month awards announcements yesterday, you might know the answer. If you’ve been paying attention to Major League Baseball at all over the past five years, you can definitely guess it. The answer, to nobody’s surprise, is Clayton Kershaw, who posted a ridiculous 0.91 ERA over six starts. What’s infinitely less intuitive and more thought-provoking is the identity of the pitcher who is second on the May ERA leaderboard: CC Sabathia.

In the interest of full disclosure, a bit of leaderboard manipulation is necessary in order to find Sabathia’s ERA ranked ahead of every pitcher not named Kershaw. A groin strain sent Sabathia to the disabled list after his start on May 4th and limited him to just four starts and 26 innings pitched for the month. So, if we’re being technical, Sabathia’s 1.04 ERA was second in the majors among starting pitchers with a minimum of 20 innings pitched. But the arbitrary nature of month-long splits isn’t why we need to talk about Sabathia. We need to talk about Sabathia because that great month contributed to his ERA doing this:

Sabathia closed out his 2015 season with a 2.86 ERA over his final nine starts. The difficulties he experienced off the field — and which immediately followed that impressive run — have been well-documented and are outside the scope of this analysis. Let’s focus entirely on what we know has happened on the field, which is that Sabathia has picked up right where he left off, recording a 2.85 ERA through his first eight starts of 2016. Considering Sabathia turns 36 years old next month and is coming off a disappointing three-year stretch during which he posted a 4.81 ERA, there are two obvious questions here. First: how did this happen? And second: will it last?

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Michael Pineda is having a hard time right now. Not when it comes to plate appearances ended by the umpire — his strikeout minus walk percentage is 21st in the big leagues, just ahead of Jake Arrieta’s. Usually that’s good enough, since K-BB% was once shown to be the best in-season predictor, and because it’s hard to be bad if you’re striking a bunch of guys out and not really walking anyone.

Usually. But not right now. Not in the Bronx, at least. Because, since 2000, nobody has recorded a K-BB% over 15% (Pineda is at 17.7% currently) and suffered from a worse batting average on balls in play. Nobody has allowed more homers per nine innings in that group, either. After contact, the ball has not been Pineda’s friend.

Still, we might just chalk it up to luck and call it a day. We might, if it wasn’t so obvious from watching Pineda that he’s having trouble with command and that things aren’t quite right.

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Most of what I do here is provide you with fun facts. Let’s be real — you already have a decent idea of which players are good and which players are bad. A healthy portion of my job, then, is to tell you what you already know, but in some new and different way. When it works, I think we all get to come away feeling smart! Hopefully it continues to work.

What I have for you here is an Andrew Miller fun fact. Not just a fun fact — my absolute favorite Andrew Miller fun fact, at least of the moment, at least as long as it’s factual. It’s not like you didn’t already know that Andrew Miller is good. We all came to terms with that years ago, and Miller hasn’t gotten any worse. He’s gotten better! Boiled down, this post is just “Andrew Miller is great at pitching.” But there’s this thing, see. He turns hitters to brain-dead mush.

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Yesterday, we tackled the best final seasons for pitchers. Today, let’s tackle the position players, so we can get to the heart of the question of just how good David Ortiz needs to be to crack one of these lists. The rules and breakdowns are the same as before, so I would encourage you to read yesterday’s post to peep those. Once again, big ups to Jeff Zimmerman for data help.

30-39 WAR

Best Final Season, Position Players with 30-39 WAR

Player	Final Season	Age	WAR	Career WAR
Roy Cullenbine	1947	33	4.4	33.8
Chick Stahl	1906	33	3.7	33.1
Tony Cuccinello	1945	37	3.0	32.2
Gil McDougald	1960	32	2.8	39.7
Joe Adcock	1966	38	2.5	34.2
Elbie Fletcher	1949	33	2.4	30.7

The guys on this list are definitely not household names, but there are some interesting, if also tragic, stories here. Let’s deal with the tragic first. There are six players here because one of them, Chick Stahl, committed suicide during spring training of the 1907 season. He had been named the Americans’ (Red Sox) player/manager over the winter, and something drove him to take his own life. This was surely a big loss for the team, as they had been counting on him to help lead them. He was the fifth-best hitter in the game just a couple years earlier in 1904.

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A few years back, I wrote a four–part series about the worst final seasons for good players. It was inspired by Willie Mays, who very prominently had a bad final season, but was far from the worst season. Now, David Ortiz has inspired the flip side of the coin – the best final season. The Large Father is off to quite a hot start, and so some people have asked, how good does he have to be to produce the best final season of all-time? As you’ll see, the answer is he’ll have to do quite a lot.

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