According to our playoff odds, there are currently 13 teams which feature playoff odds below 2%. As that number grows throughout the month, an increasingly large percentage of baseball fans will be bidding farewell to the hopes that this is the year for their preferred teams and looking to adopt other rooting interests. There’s no full replacement for the satisfaction of your team winning in October, but playoff baseball is still worth enjoying as much as you can. So, for whom do you root this month?

In recent years, Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated has popularized Team Entropy — spending your September rooting for the chaos generated by ties testing the limits of baseball’s tie-breaker system. With a range of 5.5 games separating the seven teams atop the AL Wild Card standings, Team Entropy is as in play as ever. The theoretical implications of a three- or four- or five-way tie for a Wild Card spot are delightful to imagine. It would be a blast to watch and, as someone with no skin in the game this year, I’d enjoy the hell out of it. That said, my strongest loyalties lie with another team — I’m not Team Entropy, I’m Team Cinderella.

For me, there’s no more exciting storyline than a September longshot bucking the odds and finding its way into the postseason. Two years ago, the Pirates had roughly a 20% chance to make the postseason on September 3rd according to The Baseball Gauge and then proceeded to secure themselves a spot in the Wild Card game. But I’d argue an even more exciting September Cinderella storyline unfolded a year before that when the 2013 Indians finished off the season by winning 15 of 17 and beating out the Rangers for a Wild Card Spot despite possessing 15% playoff odds at the start of that final 17-game run. Now that’s my idea of brilliant September baseball.

It’s been a few years and, though it may be a virtue, patience is certainly no fun. It’s time for a new September Cinderella team, so let’s go searching for one. For this exercise, I’m considering the cases of the five teams with playoff odds currently in the 3%-20% range.

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There was a time not that long ago when Masahiro Tanaka was one of the most exciting players around. He was then a new import said to throw the world’s best splitter, and though many lamented he just wound up on the Yankees, the most important thing was to see how he did. Tanaka, toward the beginning, was must-watch baseball. But we all move on fast these days. Tanaka pitched well, but in a way that resembled other players we’ve seen. Novelty wore off, as it always does. And then there was the matter of the elbow ligament. Tanaka has pitched through a tear, and I suspect people out there are afraid to embrace him, fearing surgery could be needed at any moment. That fear has legitimacy, but it would be legitimate with any pitcher.

We’re 71 regular-season starts into Tanaka’s big-league career. He’s run an ERA 23% better than average. This year, his numbers are no worse than they were when he was a rookie. Sure, the strikeouts are down, but so are the dingers, and this is a hell of a year to experience a dinger reduction. Tanaka, ever so quietly, has positioned himself as a contender for the American League Cy Young Award. He remains worthy of your attention. And helping to fuel Tanaka’s big year is that, for the first time, he’s throwing a successful fastball.

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Jesus Montero is still just 26 years old, and he’s having a pretty decent season at the plate. He’s batting over .300, and he has his OBP close to .350 and his slugging percentage close to .450. All things considered, that’s not a bad campaign. But for the fact that Montero has spent the summer in Triple-A, and he’s split his time between first base and DH. He’s mostly been the DH.

It’s hard to believe now that Montero spent three consecutive years within the Baseball America prospect top-10. Though the pop remains in his bat, there’s pretty much nothing else to speak of, and Montero has stood as a cautionary tale to those who’ve been high on Gary Sanchez. Not only did they rise through the same system — Montero and Sanchez have had similar roles and similar strengths, with similar criticisms and similar questions. They even made similar first impressions. At least for the time being, Montero is there to keep Sanchez fans grounded.

Yet Gary Sanchez is no Jesus Montero. I get that the parallels are many. But the profiles are dramatically different. Sanchez is looking like he can hit. Even more importantly, Sanchez is looking like he can catch.

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Tyler Clippard has always been a smart pitcher. That’s evident from his erudition as well as his results. Based on my experience, the 31-year-old reliever is equally adept at discussing his craft and flummoxing opposing hitters with solid-but-unspectacular stuff.

As noted in this past Sunday’s Notes column, Clippard has recorded the lowest BABIP against (.237) of any pitcher to have thrown at least 500 innings since 2007. That’s when the righty broke into the big leagues. Pitching for the Nationals, A’s, Mets, Diamondbacks and now the Yankees, Clippard has 45 wins, 54 saves and a 2.94 ERA in 539 appearances (all but eight out of the bullpen). Augmenting his ability to induce weak contact is a better-than-you-might-expect 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings. He’s made a pair of All-Star teams.

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Clippard on his BABIP and creating plane: “Someone brought it to my attention a few years ago. I guess it didn’t surprise me when I learned that. I’m constantly trying to figure out ways that I can pitch to get the weakest contact, whether it’s from my arm slot or my pitch selection. That’s kind of how I’ve always pitched. I’ve always tried to maximize my room for error. I’m not a guy who is going to have pinpoint command, so I’m always trying to create more plane, more deception.

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Just hours after Alex Rodriguez walked off the field following his final game (in pinstripes, at least), the Yankees made the following string of transactions.

And just hours after making those transactions, both Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin had already homered in the big leagues. Out with the old, in with the new.

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I cannot venture to say that Alex Rodriguez is a complicated individual any more than any other person, but I can fairly easily say that Alex Rodriguez the baseball player is full of complications. He’s an all-time great who has twice signed two of the most expensive contracts in baseball history, been suspended for PED use, and is currently being shoved out of the organization he has played for the past 13 seasons despite putting up colossal numbers and leading the team to a World Series championship during the 2009 season. This post is not meant to analyze Rodriguez’s career, celebrate his accomplishments or discuss his flaws. The question here is should Alex Rodriguez retire, and like most Rodriguez-related issues, it is complicated.
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Ben Heller was called up to the big leagues for the first time yesterday. He arrived as a member of the Yankees, having been acquired by New York from Cleveland at the trade deadline as part of the Andrew Miller deal. As luck would have it, the 25-year-old right-hander’s first MLB venue was Fenway Park.

His debut will come elsewhere — the Bombers left Boston without him appearing in the game — and when it does, you can expect to see heat. Heller throws hard. Baseball America rated his fastball tops in the Indians system, and opposing hitters have certainly taken notice. In 45 relief innings this season, Heller has allowed 24 hits and fanned 52 in 45 innings at the Double-A and Triple-A levels.

Heller talked about his game, and the excitement of putting on a big-league uniform for the first time, shortly before taking the field at Fenway. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday afternoon, Ichiro Suzuki became just the 30th player to reach 3,000 hits in the major leagues. He did so with a triple, making him just the second player ever to get to hit number 3,000 on a triple. It was a pretty glorious hit, and it will be one of the capstones on an awesome career. To celebrate, I thought we could take a walk back down memory lane and look at some of the most impactful hits of his Hall of Fame career. Some are his best according to WPA, some are postseason hits, and a few are just round-number hits, because we all love those. We’ll go in chronological order.

April 2, 2001, Mariners vs. Athletics
Ichiro wasted little time getting going. After grounding out to the right side in his first two major-league plate appearances, and striking out in the third, Ichiro would single up the middle in his fourth plate appearance, and drop down a bunt single in his fifth and final plate appearance of his first game.

The first hit came off of T.J. Mathews, and the bunt came off of Jim Mecir. Ichiro scored following the first hit to pull the Mariners within one run, and the bunt would push go-ahead run Carlos Guillen to third. The bunt came following a walk. Generally speaking, you don’t want to give away an out with a bunt when a reliever comes into the game and walks the first batter he faces on five pitches, but Ichiro did anyway, quickly serving notice that the normal rules of engagement did not apply to him. Guillen would cross home three batters later, and the Mariners historic 2001 season started with a bang.

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The New York Yankees are in the middle stages of an overhaul, both in terms of player turnover and also philosophy. Over the past few weeks, the team has traded Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Carlos Beltran for a bevy of prospects that includes four players near the top of Eric Longenhagen’s rankings of prospects traded at the deadline. Mark Teixeira wasn’t going to be back next year, so his retirement announcement is more a symbol of — rather than actual contribution to — a changing Yankees’ future. The news that Alex Rodriguez would be stepping aside as well, though, further adds to the changing of the guard in the Bronx. They were in a similar spot in 2013 and abandoned plans to build for the future so they could contend in the near term. Will they abandon those plans again or will they exercise a little more discipline?

The Chicago Cubs spent years both (a) getting rid of old contracts and (b) trading, drafting, and signing prospects. Last season, they began to see the fruits of their labor. The Yankees shouldn’t need to head down that path. The team’s farm system was strong before the team sold at the trade deadline, and it’s possible that some of the international signings from 2014 will start to make their way up the ranks in the near future, as well. The Yankees also have less of a financial need to get rid of bad contracts before contending. The Yankees have the financial power to spend to succeed. These are the larger long-term contracts they do currently possess:

• Jacoby Ellsbury (four years, $90 million)
• Masahiro Tanaka (four years, $89 million with an opt out after 2017)
• Brian McCann (two years, $34 million)
• Starlin Castro (three years, $31 million)
• Chase Headley (two years, $26 million)
• Brett Gardner (two years, $25 million)
• CC Sabathia (one more year at $25 M seems likely with his vested option)

Of those contracts, Sabathia is likely an overpay — but for just one season — and the Yankees might need his innings next year, even if they’re just of the average variety. Gardner, Headley, and McCann are all reasonable contracts which compensate each player at a rate pretty close to his actual value. If the team believes prospect Gary Sanchez is ready to take over full-time catching duties, then giving away McCann is an option to free up salary, but he’s not likely to bring decent prospects back. The same is true for Gardner. Castro remains an enigma, providing generally below-average production, but his salaries are hardly burdensome. Ellsbury has a contract from which the team might like to free itself, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense to pick up some of his contract for someone else when he’s still likely to provide average production from center field. Tanaka has pitched very well this season and should be the Yankees ace in 2017 before he opting out of his contract after that.

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As it has been the past few years, the 2016 non-waiver trade deadline brought about a flurry of activity that was hard to keep up with even if it was the only thing you were doing. Since most of us have other things that we have to or would like to occupy our time with, we figured we would save you some hassle and create an omnibus post with all of our trade deadline content so that you have it all in one place. For clarity’s sake, I’m going to limit this to articles about trades that actually took place.

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