The process of tweaking THE BOARD never ends. We’ll make it clear when there’s a wholesale update. For the moment, however, we’ve provided here some the most recent additions and subtractions. Players listed in order of preference.

Andruw Monasterio, SS, Nationals, 40 FV
Acquired from the Cubs for Daniel Murphy. Is flying under the radar as a solid utility type who makes contact, runs above average, and plays a solid shortstop.

Moises Gomez, RF, Rays, 40 FV
Just turned 20 at the end of loud full-season debut in Low-A. Is flashing everyday-right-fielder tools.

Bryan Abreu, RHP, Astros, 40 FV
Another Astros power arm up to 97 with above to plus breaking balls. Likely relief fit due to inconsistency.

Otto Lopez, SS, Blue Jays, 35+ FV
A high-energy athlete who can play almost any position. Is more contact-oriented, utility-type fit presently with a chance for better.

Ivan Herrera, C, Cardinals, 35+ FV
Has always performed. Has power and some feel to hit, along with a chance to stick at catcher.

Luis Santana, 2B, Mets, 35+ FV
Lacks physical projection and is currently playing in a crowded infield rotation at Kingsport, but has real feel to hit and has always performed.

C.J. Alexander, 3B, Braves, 35+ FV
A late pick this summer as an old junior-college player. Has plus lefty raw power and has recorded surprising early performance regarding contact. Plays passable defense at all four corner spots.

Recently graduated prospects include Rays SS Willy Adames (60 FV), LHP Jalen Beeks (45 FV), and RHP Diego Castillo (40 FV), along with Jays LHP Ryan Borucki (45 FV) and IF Lourdes Gurriel (40 FV).

We’re due to have some movement among already ranked prospects in the coming weeks, before rankings lock for offseason organizational lists.

Jose Bautista is on the move again. On Tuesday afternoon, minutes before their window to complete a waiver-period trade expired, the Mets and Phillies agreed to a deal that will send Joey Bats from the NL East’s fourth-place team to it’s second-place one. In exchange, the Mets, who signed the 37-year-old outfielder on May 22 after he was released by the Braves, will receive either a player to be named later or cash, preferably in unmarked bills.

After nine-plus seasons with the Blue Jays — highlighted by six All-Star appearances, two home run titles, the team’s first two trips to the postseason since their 1992 and ’93 World Series wins, and the franchise’s most iconic hit since Joe Carter’s — Bautista found himself out of work this past winter. Not until April did he sign a minor league deal with the Braves, for whom he played just 12 games, hitting .143/.250/.343 with two homers in 40 plate appearances before being released. Two days later, and less than a week after losing both Yoenis Cespedes and Juan Lagares to injuries, the Mets picked him up. Between the absences of those two players — now out for the season due to foot surgeries — plus injuries to Jay Bruce and Todd Frazier and a dearth of better ideas, the team gave Bautista 302 plate appearances, in which he hit a modest .204/.351/.367 with nine homers, a 104 wRC+, and 0.4 WAR. He was very hot in June (.250/.434/.536, 161 wRC+), but otherwise, not so much:

Between his Atlanta and New York stints, Bautista is walking in 16.4% of his plate appearances, a rate in line with his heyday, but both his 11.1% swinging strike rate and 28.7% strikeout rate represent career highs. His Statcast numbers look considerably better than last year and suggest he’s been a bit unlucky:

On the other hand, Bautista is pulling the ball on 50.8% of his balls in play, a bit above his career rate (47.2%), and a frequency that’s easily countered by infield shifts. Both his 47 wRC+ against those shifts and his .253 BABIP overall are in the general vicinity of his recent body of work, and are contributing to a batting average that’s flirting with the Mendoza Line.

Losers of 19 out of 36 games since the All-Star break, the Phillies (70-61 overall) are 3.5 games behind the Braves in the NL East and 2.5 back in the wild card race. Their playoff odds have fallen from 46.8% to 40.3% in that span. Their second-half struggles have more to do with deteriorating run prevention than sagging offense; their 94 wRC+ since the break is actually three points better than it was prior. The production they’ve been receiving from the three positions where Bautista has taken 63 of his 66 starts this year (right field, left field, and third base) has improved from the first half to the second: right fielder Nick Williams‘ wRC+ has risen from 102 to 119, left fielder Rhys Hoskins‘ from 122 to 159, and third baseman Maikel Franco’s from 102 to 123. Their clearest need for an upgrade in a role that Bautista can fill is as a pinch-hitter, as theirs have batted just .202/.266/.331 for a 59 wRC+, the league’s second-lowest mark.

In all, the addition of Bautista is a minor move, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth making. On a team with few position players who have tasted the postseason (Asdrubal Cabrera, Wilson Ramos, Carlos Santana), they’ve added another, a guy who might have a few big hits left in that bat.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, Bautista — who as a rookie in 2004 played for four different major league teams — is now the third player to play for three teams within the same division in the same season, after Bob Reynolds (Orioles, Tigers, and Indians, oh my!) in 1975 and Kelly Johnson (Yankees, Red Sox, and Orioles) in 2014.

The St. Louis Cardinals brought 1B/“OF” Matt Adams back to his old stomping grounds, picking him up from the Washington Nationals after claiming him on revocable waivers.

Bryce Harper hasn’t been traded yet — and that would be a big one if it actually happens — but the departure of Daniel Murphy (about whom Craig Edwards will soon publish a post) and Adams is a likely indicator of how Washington feels about their rapidly deteriorating playoff odds. It’s a bit of speculation here, but from talking with people around baseball, I’m of the belief that ownership was less inclined to throw in the towel than team general manager Mike Rizzo.

Adams is a role player but a useful one for a team that’s starting to think about playoff bullpens. The 340-point OPS split between his career numbers against lefties (.595) and righties (.835) always made Adams a tough call as a full-time starting first baseman. Nevertheless, it gives him situational value. The Cardinals are 17th in baseball against right-handers by wRC+ versus sixth against lefties, and Greg Garcia is the only other left-handed bat available on the bench. Nor can the team dig in and grab someone from Triple-A: the only lefty Redbird hitters are Justin Williams, recently picked up in the Tommy Pham trade, and Max Schrock, who only has a .666 OPS and I think was the secondary bad guy in Batman Returns. Williams may have a future on the team, but if you just need a lefty bat off the bench, Adams is more valuable at this point.

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Position: Software Developer

Location: Coplay, Pennsylvania

Position Overview:
Sports Info Solutions (SIS) is looking for candidates to fill a full-time position in their IT Department. The candidate will develop new features and products as well as help maintain existing internal and external products within a mature codebase. The ideal candidate will be responsible for building applications, including anything from back-end services to their client-end counterparts. The primary responsibilities will be to design and develop these applications, and to coordinate with the rest of the team working on different layers of the infrastructure. Therefore, a commitment to collaborative problem solving, sophisticated design, and quality product is essential.

Responsibilities:

• Develop new features, applications and maintain existing applications and reports for use internally and by SIS clients, including MLB and NFL coaches and front office staff.
• Design, build, and maintain efficient, reusable, and reliable code.
• Ensure the best possible performance, quality, and responsiveness of applications.
• Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to these problems.
• Help maintain code quality, organization, and automation.
• Full life-cycle development.
• Web and/or API development in C# and ASP.NET, including ASP.NET Core.
• Windows application development in VB and C#.
• Correspond with clients, including MLB and NFL teams, agents, media companies, and others.

Qualifications:

The ideal candidate will possess:

• 2+ years of relevant experience.
• Proficient in C#, with a good knowledge of its ecosystems.
• Familiarity with the .NET framework, including .NET Core.
• Strong understanding of object-oriented programming.
• Strong familiarity with Microsoft SQL Server programming.
• Familiar with various design and architectural patterns.
• Knack for writing clean, readable C# code.
• Understanding fundamental design principles behind a scalable application.
• Creating database schemas that represent and support business processes.
• ASP.NET (Web Forms or MVC), ASP.NET Core and Windows Forms.
• Knack for writing clean, readable C# code.
• Understanding of SSRS.
• HTML and CSS.
• In-depth knowledge of MS Development tools.
• Basics of Windows Server Administration.

Bonus Points for:

• Open Source (languages/databases/Linux), DevOps and either AWS or Azure experience.
• Self-motivated attitude.
• Able to work in a collaborative, team environment or independently as needed.
• Great communication skills.
• Knowledge of baseball statistics and analytics.

To Apply:
To apply, please use the following link: Sports Info Solutions Software Developer

Andrew Romine isn’t a pitcher, and yet, on Sunday, Andrew Romine pitched. So did — in another game — Chase d’Arnaud. Two days before that, Charlie Culberson took the mound, and so did — in another game — Andrew Romine. Scott Kingery and Roman Quinn pitched the day before that. Brandon Dixon pitched a few days before that.

I’m sure you’ve read by now more than enough summaries of how position players are making more and more appearances on the mound. It’s already happened 14 times in August alone, a month that isn’t even two-thirds complete. This is apparently just a part of the game now — rare, but no longer rare and so exciting. Some people still like it. Some people are troubled. Just in general, from the simplest perspective, it’s probably not good to have pitching done by non-pitchers.

I’m not here to make any suggestions. I’m not here to conduct any meaningful analysis. I just figured we’ve had enough position players pitching that we might as well take a quick look at some numbers. What’s actually taken place so far in 2018? Here are teams sorted in descending order of innings thrown by non-pitchers. You also see the total runs allowed by those position players.

The Diamondbacks and Brewers lead the way, at 6.1 innings. Viewed another way, I guess you could say the Diamondbacks and Brewers are in last place. Five teams haven’t yet had a position player pitch — the Pirates, Tigers, Yankees, Red Sox, and Rockies.

Now here are teams sorted in descending order of innings thrown by non-pitchers against them. You also see the total runs scored against those position players.

The Dodgers are in first, having batted for eight innings against non-pitchers. Over those eight innings, they’ve scored eight runs. Five teams have yet to face a position player pitching — the Pirates, Tigers, Giants, White Sox, and Mariners.

At last, here are team run differentials, considering only innings thrown by position players for and/or against:

In what we’ll simply refer to as “stupid baseball,” the Nationals are the winners, having outscored their opponents by six. The Dodgers have outscored their opponents by five. At the other end, the Phillies are running away with things. While they’ve scored three runs against position players, their own position players have combined to allow 14, yielding a run differential of -11. On the plus side, those runs are basically pointless, since almost every single position-player pitching appearance comes when the game has already been decided. The Phillies’ overall run differential might be 77 runs worse than the Braves’, but at least part of that can be ignored. When position players pitch, it’s hardly regular baseball.

Two teams remain who haven’t yet seen a position player pitch for or against. Those teams are the Pirates and Tigers. For those clubs, at least, the act might retain some of its novelty. There’s still another week and a half before rosters expand, and position players stop doing this. We’ll see if the two ballclubs hold out.

We are debuting a new leaderboard today, the Season Stat Grid. It’s a little different than most of our leaderboards. Instead of having multiple stats in columns for each player, we are showing just one stat on the page and displaying multiple different seasons across the columns. This will allow readers to compare players to other players and themselves across several years.

You are able to select from most batting and pitching stats available on the player pages. There is a “Popular” stat menu which will always contain WAR along with other frequently used or otherwise important stats.

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As reported by Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, the Philadelphia Phillies acquired first baseman Justin Bour and cash considerations from the Miami Marlins for a minor-league pitcher who is yet to be named.

That a first baseman who can hit a little bit went in a minor August trade is another data point on just how little first baseman with some offensive pep are valued in baseball in 2018. It kind of makes you wonder about the team’s public stance to not let their players go cheaply; while Bour’s oblique injury came at a bad time for a deadline trade in 2017, I can’t help but think that a hitter coming off a .289/.366/.536 season could have fetched more than this over the winter. Yes, Bour has larger-than-typical platoon splits for a left-handed batter, with a 210-point difference in career OPS vs. RHP and LHP, but in some ways, that actually makes it easier for his new club to find a role for him. Also, he makes practically nothing in baseball terms ($3.4 million in 2018) and has two additional years before free agency.

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We have a new feature on the site: live-updating daily leaderboards! These leaderboards update as games are played without having to reload the page, providing live-updating daily stats for every player along side our existing live scoreboard, win probability graphs, box scores, and play log.

These leaderboards are aimed specifically at showing single-game stats, including ones not available on our traditional leaderboards such as swinging strikes, called strikes, and foul balls for pitchers, and granular batted ball stats for batters.

The live leaderboards also offer the option to filter by different position types, a feature geared toward fantasy owners. They include categories like infielders, middle infielders, and corner infielders.

Finally, these leaderboards allow you to filter by multiple teams. Just click “Filter by Team” and pick the teams you’d like to see. This makes it easy to compare opposing starting pitchers side-by-side, since each team is listed above/below the team they’re playing that day.

Position: Data Engineer, Baseball Strategy Office

Location: Sendai, Japan

Description:
The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles of NPB are seeking a data engineer to join the Baseball Strategy Office. This position will assist in building an analytic system to:

• Generate new insights
• Automate existing reports
• Allow wider audience to reach data
• Integrate new data sources

A successful candidate will be an excellent communicator and problem solver who will communicate closely with coaches and players to develop and productize new ideas on a regular basis. The candidate will also have a user-first mindset and will be able to put the team first in a demanding environment.

Responsibilities:

• Assist in expansion of internal analysis and report generation system
• Design and experiment with new ideas and analytical methods
• Generate effective and easy-to-interpret output
• Assist in guaranteeing the quality of data
• Design database to integrate new data sources

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in fields such as statistics, computer science, engineering or mathematics
• 3-5 years experience working in a technology, analytical or product-oriented environment
• Knowledge of Python/R/SQL
• Strong communication skills (knowledge of Japanese language is preferred, but not required)
• Experience living overseas is preferred
• Having previously built, and be able to show, an end-to-end product or analytical output

Employment Status:
Annual renewable contract

To Apply:
Please send your resume and CV to eagles-jobs@mail.rakuten.com.

After arriving in the majors back in 2012 as a relatively unheralded prospect, Twins second baseman Brian Dozier entered the 2018 campaign having produced five consecutive above-average seasons. The All-Star middle infielder’s 2016-17 performance (11.2 WAR) places him second among qualified second basemen during that time, behind none other than Jose Altuve. Even accounting for his 2018 struggles — a relative term, since he is still tracking for league-average performance — Dozier ranks third among all second basemen over the last three calendar years, trailing Altuve by a sizable margin and Robinson Cano by a half-win.

Roughly two-thirds of the way through a season in which the Twins expected to contend — having acquired Lance Lynn, Logan Morrison, Addison Reed (among others) all at market value or less — the Twins haven’t succeeded on that front, having struggled in a very weak AL Central. They find themselves seven games under .500 and trail the Indians by eight full games; as you might expect, they are expected to be less productive than the Indians for the remainder of the season, too.

With that serving as background, the club dealt one of their central pieces today. A combination of ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick and NBC LA’s Michael Duarte reported the deal, as follows.

Dodgers get:

• 2B Brian Dozier

Twins get:

• INF Logan Forsythe
• 1B Luke Raley
• LHP Devin Smeltzer

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