Not to be too harsh to the Pirates, but the club hasn’t been all that relevant for much of the year. They started off the season pretty well and, at the end of April, their 17-12 record put them just half a game out of first place. With three other teams — teams considered more talented — all hovering around the same spot, it was safe to assume the Pirates would eventually get lost in the shuffle. On May 17, after winning eight of nine games, the Pirates were in first place with a 26-17 record and a 30% chance at making the playoffs. Then the expected fade occurred, and the team went 16-32 over the next 48 games. Their playoff hopes looked shot, as the graph below shows.

Now here is what the playoff odds look like after an 11-game winning streak, but before today’s loss.

Simply approaching a 20% chance of qualifying for the postseason might not seem particularly notable, but the National League is a jumbled mess right now. After the Dodgers and Cubs, there are nine teams with a reasonable shot at one of the three remaining playoff berths and none of the teams has odds greater than 60%, as the table below indicates.

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Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. He has 25 homers (third in the league), a 20.7% walk rate (best), and has contributed nearly five runs on the bases (12th). He’s also made 100% of routine plays, 100% of likely plays, and 100% of even plays in center, good for a 3.4 UZR/150. He’s tied with Jose Ramirez for the league lead in WAR. Mike Trout is good at everything! You know this. I know this. All hail Mike Trout.

Commissioner Rob Manfred recently identified what he regards as a flaw, though:

Player marketing requires one thing for sure — the player. You cannot market a player passively. You can’t market anything passively. You need people to engage with those to whom you are trying to market in order to have effective marketing. We are very interested in having our players more engaged and having higher-profile players and helping our players develop their individual brand. But that involves the player being actively engaged.

Mike’s a great, great player and a really nice person, but he’s made certain decisions about what he wants to do and what he doesn’t want to do, and how he wants to spend his free time and how he doesn’t want to spend his free time. That’s up to him. If he wants to engage and be more active in that area, I think we could help him make his brand really, really big. But he has to make a decision that he’s prepared to engage in that area. It takes time and effort.

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There’s a reason some have connected starting pitchers to the Yankees.

According to ERA- and WAR, the Yankees’ rotation ranks behind that of the other AL elites like the Astros, Indians, and Red Sox, which rank 1-2-3 in ERA-. The Yankees rank sixth (95), just better than league average.

Only Luis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka, and Fringe Five alumnus Jonathan Loaisiga project to produce ERA and FIP marks below four the rest of the way, according to FanGraphs Depth Charts. While Severino is an ace, playoff contenders typically always want more starting pitching. Even Yu Darvish wasn’t seen as a luxury item to the pitching-rich Dodgers last season.

But on Tuesday, the Yankees continued to do what they’ve done since last deadline season by adding to the game’s best bullpen — according to ERA, WAR and ERA- — with the addition of Zach Britton.

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The Astros have it relatively easy: They’re a super-team lacking meaningful divisional competition. The Indians have it even easier: They should resemble a super-team as well, playing in one of the very worst divisions in modern baseball history. This isn’t what it’s like for the Yankees or the Red Sox. While both teams are almost certainly going to the playoffs, one of them will have to survive the wild-card game, which brings an abrupt end to one competitive team’s season. Even though either team would be favored in this year’s matchup, neither is excited by the prospect, so they’re working to try to finish in first. Late Tuesday, the Yankees got better by fetching help in the bullpen. Early Wednesday, the Red Sox responded by fetching help in the rotation.

Red Sox get:

• Nathan Eovaldi

Rays get:

• Jalen Beeks

It’s a clean trade — a one-for-one between a team in the hunt and a team watching it from the outside. In general, it looks how these trades usually look. The good team is getting a veteran rental, and the worse team is getting a longer-term prospect. Indeed, you could say this is a normal trade for the teams to make. But even normal trades are interesting! And for both sides, this is a bet on the numbers. It’s a bet on the new Eovaldi, and on the new Beeks. Both have been pitchers in transition.

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We live in amazing times when it comes to the collection of talent that is occupying the left side of the infield — or is supposed to be, if not for injuries (we miss you, Corey Seager, and please come back soon, Carlos Correa and Josh Donaldson). Remarkably, at a position where defense reigns supreme, shortstops as a group are hitting for a collective 99 wRC+ at this point, up from the range of 87 to 92 that it’s occupied since 2002. Third basemen are at a high as well as far as offense with a 108 mark. And in case you haven’t seen the highlight reels, there is no shortage of guys from these two positions who can Pick It.

As it happens, nearly every contender this year — which for this series I’ve defined as teams with playoff odds at least 15.0%, a definition that currently covers 16 teams — is outfitted well enough at the two positions, having balanced offensive and defensive concerns such that there’s a dearth of Replacement-Level Killer candidates. Only three teams from among the eight who have received less than 1.0 WAR from their shortstops are contenders, and likewise, just three others from among the 10 are in the same situation at third base. One team has needs in both areas, namely the Pirates, whose 11-game winning streak has pushed their odds above 15% and thus forced me to include them in this exercise, even though you, I, and Bob Nutting all know they’re still very long shots.

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Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Luis Rengifo, MIF, Los Angeles Angels (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR   FV: 45
Line: 3-for-5, 2 2B

Notes
Rengifo slipped through the cracks of our offseason team prospect lists, as he was traded from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles after we had finished the Angels’ writeup but before we had finished the Rays’. It’s turned into a fairly significant failure of process, as Rengifo has traveled three levels throughout the year, walking more than he has struck out while swiping 37 bases. Rengifo profiles as a max-effort utility guy who contributes in many subtle ways. Chone Figgins comps were being made before Rengifo was traded to the Angels and now seem more prescient — if perhaps a bit overzealous, as Rengifo doesn’t have that kind of elite speed.

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