Kirby Yates entered the 2018 season as one of the league’s most quietly interesting relievers.

He posted an elite 29.9-point K-BB% last year, ranking seventh among all pitchers who threw at least 40 innings. Only Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen, and James Hoyt bettered his 17.4% swinging-strike rate last season.

Yates ranked 24th in whiff-per-swing rate on his four-seam, high-spin fastball (31.7%), according to the PITCHf/x leaderboards at Baseball Prospectus. His split-change (45.7%) and slider (44.0%) also produced above-average swing-and-miss rates per swing. Selected off waivers from the Angels last April, Yates was quite a find.

Entering the season, then, the Padres appeared to have another potential difference-making bullpen arm to complement Brad Hand. In fact, the Padres appeared to have the makings of one of the better bullpens in the game — and it has been one of the better bullpens in the game. San Diego ranks fourth in relief WAR (3.5), trailing only the Astros, Brewers, and Yankees.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Juan Soto‘s timeline-rearranging home run, Adrian Houser throwing up mid-game, Nick Markakis and Braves all-star voting, a Mets official’s donut metaphor, and Mike Trout’s continued excellence, then (17:35) talk to longtime MLB umpire and crew chief Dale Scott about miking up umpires, manager-umpire arguments, the Tom Hallion/Terry Collins clip and the expression “ass in the jackpot,” automated strike-calling, catcher framing, other factors that affect the strike zone, coming out as the first publicly gay MLB ump (and the possibility of a player coming out), replay reviews on slides, pace of play and time between pitches, how umps develop their punchouts, why balks are confusing, whether strikes have a sound, his history with concussions, and more, plus (1:12:59) follow-ups on the stumble play and other topics and closing banter about a bad baseball scene on Netflix and a Pablo Sandoval patience secret.

Audio intro: The Delgados, "Hate is All You Need"
Audio interstitial: The Posies, "I May Hate You Sometimes"
Audio outro: Porcupine Tree, "Don’t Hate Me"

Link to Adrian Houser throwing up
Link to Mike Trout fun-fact-a-thon
Link to article about Dale Scott coming out
Link to Dale Scott’s punchout
Link to Ben’s ALDS Game 5 oral history
Link to list of players who appeared in a suspended game “before” their MLB debut
Link to article about Steven Brault’s national-anthem debut
Link to baseball scene from Set it Up

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One could argue that, during the 2015-16 offseason, Jason Heyward was my hill. If that’s the case, I am now mostly dead. After producing almost six wins in his final campaign with the Cardinals, the outfielder recorded just a lone win in each of his first two seasons with Chicago.

I say mostly dead, though, because Heyward’s bat is showing some signs of life: since coming off the disabled list a month ago, he’s hitting .307/.347/.489 with a 124 wRC+. While that represents a hot streak for the Cubs version of Heyward, it pretty closely approximates what the team probably expected from Heyward when they signed him. Whatever the case, it is the best run he has produced since the joining the team.

Heyward’s swing changes have been frequent over the past few years. He has altered his mechanics nearly every season of his career. The Cubs hoped to unlock more power out of Heyward after he posted a 121 wRC+ for the Cardinals in a 2015 campaign during which he took a bunch of walks, limited his strikeouts, ran the bases well, and exhibited slightly below-average power. The Cubs weren’t wrong to try and unearth that version of Heyward. With his defense, baserunning, batting eye, and contact skills, the addition of a bit more power might have made Heyward an MVP candidate.

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For the past week or so, I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing about Justin Miller. Miller is a 31-year-old reliever, and, by the way, he’s pitching for the Nationals. Though he’s allowed runs in each of his last two appearances, he’s faced 43 batters so far, and he’s struck out 22 of them, without one single walk. Miller, last year, was bad in Triple-A for the Angels. Now he looks like he could be one of the more dominant relievers around. It’s too early to go quite that far, but, well, you know how relievers are. They can emerge or decline in the blink of an eye.

It’s possible that, in Miller, the Nationals have found something. He might turn out to be one of the keys to their season. But Mike Rizzo is also no stranger to making midseason bullpen upgrades, and you don’t want to end up counting on Miller to keep up the miracle. And so, Monday, Rizzo has moved to beef up the depth in front of Sean Doolittle. In the current era of baseball, it’s almost impossible to have too many good relievers. The Nationals got a new one from the Royals.

Nationals get:

• Kelvin Herrera

Royals get:

• Kelvin Gutierrez
• Blake Perkins
• Yohanse Morel

I’m not sure there’s anything stunning here. Herrera was very obviously going to be available, as a contract-year closer on a terrible team. The Nationals are in the hunt, and the bullpen in front of Doolittle has sometimes been shaky. The prospect package seems to be light, but rentals generally don’t fetch a blockbuster. Herrera’s strikeout rate is only 23%. What surprises me more than anything is that this happened on June 18. It doesn’t surprise me that the Nationals would want Herrera for five or six extra weeks. It surprises me that, on so early a date, the Royals would settle.

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Been a long time since I ran a polling post. So, this is going to be one of those, where I ask you, the smart audience, to tell me what you think about certain questions. Typically, these polling posts focus on teams. This time around, the focus is on ten specific hitters. These are ten hitters whose performances to this point don’t look very much like their preseason Steamer and ZiPS projections. I’ve selected five significant overachievers, and five significant underachievers. Their names!

• Max Muncy
• Brandon Nimmo
• Mookie Betts
• Matt Davidson
• Eddie Rosario
• Bryce Harper
• Jackie Bradley Jr.
• Giancarlo Stanton
• Dexter Fowler
• Chris Davis

We spend a lot of time writing about players who are in some way defying expectations. Players who might have reached or sunk to a new level. For example, I’ve written about Muncy a couple times lately, and Jay Jaffe recently wrote about Davis. It’s interesting when players don’t do what we think they’re going to do. Rarely, though, do we open things up to audience opinion. You all watch a lot of baseball, and you all are familiar with contemporary analysis. That’s why you’re here. But most of the time, all you get is a comment section. Consider this something like a midseason fan-projection project. How much do you believe in the success of the players above? Are you expecting positive or negative regression, or do you believe some of them have new true talents?

Everything that follows is simple. I’m not going to offer any analysis, beyond each player’s current wRC+, and projected rest-of-season wRC+. All I’m asking for each guy is what you think his wRC+ will be over the remainder of the season. When the results are in, we can see what the community thinks of each of the players. Doesn’t mean anything is conclusive or correct! It’s just nice to get other data points for a change. Thank you in advance for your participation. You don’t have to vote in every poll if you don’t want to. You don’t have to do anything here if you don’t want to. You wouldn’t believe how completely voluntary this is!

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A little more than two months ago, I noted that the Mariners’ bullpen had been — through that point in the season — among the most improved in the game, relative to preseason expectations. Before the 2018 season began, we projected Seattle relievers to strike out 9.1 batters per nine innings and walk 3.5.

A couple weeks into the season, they weren’t doing that. They were performing much better than that, actually. At the time I wrote that first article, Mariners relievers had struck out 10.7 batters per nine innings and walked just 1.5, both of which were tremendously good numbers and perhaps merited further investigation at the time. But it was still early, so I kept the article general and cautioned that we shouldn’t necessarily expect the men in teal to keep up their early-season performance too much longer.

Well, we’re now more than a third of the way through the major-league schedule, and the Seattle bullpen has stayed improved. In fact, the Seattle bullpen has been among the top three or four in the game, no matter which way you slice it, but this piece is about improvement against expectations. Here’s an updated version of a chart I included in my original article, which plots each teams’ actual relief K/9 and BB/9 (adjusted so that positive figures are good in both cases), through games played on Friday, against our preseason expectations of the same:

Observant readers will note that there is another happy story to tell here about the Astros’ pen — featuring Héctor Rondón and Chris Devenski — and a sad one about the Orioles, featuring almost every Oriole. But, again, this article is about the Mariners, whose improvement relative to projections in both K/9 and BB/9 has been outstanding — and key to the club’s outrageous performance in one-run games, which was detailed here by my colleague Jay Jaffe. Maybe it’s finally time to dive a little bit deeper into what they’ve been doing and why it’s been successful.

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As a part of their sudden organizational push, the Brewers almost simultaneously acquired both Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain. Yelich is only 26, but Cain is 32, yet when the Brewers gave Cain a five-year free-agent contract, they justified the investment by saying they believed his aging curve would be graceful. The Brewers were believers in Cain’s athleticism and track record, and they didn’t see him as a player likely to fall off a cliff. Every team that signs a free agent is optimistic, of course. But Cain was one of relatively few free agents whose market didn’t crater. In an otherwise challenging winter, he got what he was worth.

To this point, Cain’s been even better than the Brewers might’ve imagined. He’s 11th among position players in WAR. He’s more than halfway to his career high in stolen bases. He leads all major-league center fielders in Defensive Runs Saved, and he leads all major-league center fielders in Ultimate Zone Rating. And Cain is also showing off a new and disciplined approach at the plate. I know it’s early, and there’s plenty of contract to go. But Cain isn’t just avoiding decline — he’s taken steps to improve.

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

We’re entering a time on the scouting calendar when a great shift in resources occurs. Short-season leagues get underway this week (if they haven’t already), which means some amateur scouts will pick up regional pro coverage now that the draft is done, while others stay on the amateur showcase circuit to prep for 2019. It also means teams that know if they’re buying or selling at the trade deadline can target scouting resources more efficiently by identifying likely trade partners and focusing on those systems. For example, the Padres have probably considered what teams are in need of lefty relief help at the deadline and have made it an organizational priority to know about those teams’ systems more than the systems of other rebuilding clubs. Daily Prospect Notes returns as a space to explain and discuss concepts like this, individual performers, my in-person notes, and whatever else I see fit to talk about.

Yordan Alvarez, 1B/OF, Houston Astros (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 3  FV: 55
Line: 2-for-5, HR

Notes
Sunday was Alvarez’s first game back from a hand injury that cost him about a month and a half. Injuries have limited him to 134 games combined in parts of three pro seasons. Between those extended periods of inactivity, however, Alvarez has dominated. This is a giant 20-year-old who is remarkably athletic and twitchy for his size and crushing Double-A in a modest sample. This was the relatively unknown guy that the Dodgers signed for $2 million just before the clock struck midnight on the 2015 July 2 period. He hadn’t suited up for the Dodgers before they sent him to Houston for Josh Fields, and now he’s the best prospect from that 2015 Dodgers July 2 class by a sizable margin. He’s a potential middle-of-the-order force and quickly closing in on an increasingly expendable A.J. Reed.

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