When the Yankees promoted Gleyber Torres in late April, they envisioned him helping them on both sides of the ball, replacing an underwhelming Ronald Torreyes/Tyler Wade platoon that was admittedly nothing more than a stopgap, a temporary solution to an infield logjam. Even so, they probably didn’t expect the kind of power outburst that Torres has provided. After going homerless in his first 12 games, the 21-year-old rookie second baseman has clubbed eight homers in his most recent 15. His total leads the team in the month of May — and that’s a team on pace to break the major-league record for home runs in a season.

Though he’s listed at 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds, Torres did not show a ton of in-game power coming up through the minors. His season high of 11 homers was set in 2016, when he was 19 years old and playing at the High-A stops of the Cubs and Yankees. To be fair, with seven homers in 55 games last year, he probably would have surpassed that total had he not torn his left UCL and required season-ending Tommy John surgery in June. The prospect hounds at Baseball America and MLB Pipeline both graded his power as a 55 (above average), with the latter suggesting 20-plus homers annually; our own Kiley McDaniel graded his raw power at 55/60 (present/future) and his game power at 40/55. The 55 is here, at the very least.

From Baseball Prospectus senior prospect writer Jarrett Seidler:

Y’all undersold Gleyber’s power because he didn’t dong a lot in bad parks while he was growing into his brick shithouse body

— Jarrett Seidler (@jaseidler) May 24, 2018

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Jose Quintana’s season is a little difficult to figure out. In three of his first four starts, he allowed 17 runs combined; in that fourth appearance, he pitched six shutout innings. Over four of his past five starts, meanwhile, he’s conceded one run total; he allowed six runs in the other.

Is he improving as the season goes on? He struck out 16 batters against 11 walks in 19.2 innings in those first four starts and struck out 29 hitters and walked 14 in 28.2 innings over the past five outings. His ERA is much lower in the latter of those two periods, but his FIP hasn’t moved a great deal, going from 5.15 to 4.37. These samples are small enough that it would be fair to conclude little to nothing had changed at all, but given his excellent track record, there has to be something to Quintana’s struggles.

A year ago at this time, there were some questions about Quintana’s trade value for the White Sox after the left-hander started slowly. Over his first 11 outings last season, Quintana had authored a 5.60 ERA and 4.40 FIP. Most of Quintana’s issues in terms of ERA stemmed from an increase in homers and a poor left-on-base percentage. After investigating Quintana’s numbers, I felt that most of Quintana’s issues were probably luck-based and unlikely to continue. Brushing off those concerns looks pretty good in hindsight, as Quintana put up a 3.30 FIP and 3.40 ERA and allowed just under one homer per nine innings the rest of the way, eventually helping a Cubs teams desperate for quality starter innings. This season, Quintana’s issues aren’t as easy to brush off.

While Quintana’s current FIP might resemble last year’s figure at roughly the same point in the season, his 4.68 FIP is nearly 20% worse than league average after accounting for the change in league and park. Additionally, there isn’t a gap in contact quality that suggests perhaps Quintana is just getting unlucky. So far, Quintana is giving up home runs because he has deserved to give up home runs. He’s striking out fewer batters than he did a year ago while his walks have gone way up. These are all bad things.

If there’s any cause for hope, it is twofold. One, Quintana has shown some flashes of being the very good pitcher he was before the season started, putting up four starts of at least six innings and zero or one run with at least five strikeouts. The second reason for optimism is that Quintana is still tinkering.

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On Wednesday, one of the top stories across the sports world was the National Football League’s institution of a new policy banning players from kneeling in protest during the national anthem.

From ESPN’s Kevin Seifert and Dan Graziano:

 NFL owners have unanimously approved a new national anthem policy that requires players to stand if they are on the field during the performance but gives them the option to remain in the locker room if they prefer, it was announced Wednesday.

The policy subjects teams to a fine if a player or any other team personnel do not show respect for the anthem. That includes any attempt to sit or kneel, as dozens of players have done during the past two seasons to protest racial inequality and police brutality. Those teams also will have the option to fine any team personnel, including players, for the infraction.

A couple of notes here: the policy was unanimous among owners who voted; the San Francisco 49ers abstained from the vote. Also, this policy was evidently something of a compromise; the league was previously throwing around ideas like a 15-yard penalty for kneeling.

The previous policy required players to be on the field for the anthem but said only that they “should” stand. When then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling in 2016, the league had no rule it could use to prevent it. The movement drew increasing criticism from President Donald Trump, as well as many fans, who believed it was a sign of disrespect toward the flag and country.

Owners, however, had been divided on how to extricate the league from that criticism. Some owners, including the Dallas Cowboys’ Jerry Jones and the Houston Texans’ Bob McNair, wanted all players to stand. Others, such as the New York Jets’ Christopher Johnson, wanted to avoid any appearance of muzzling players.

Even the seemingly simple option of clearing the field prior to the anthem was rejected by some owners who thought it would be interpreted as a mass protest or at least a sign of disrespect.

But it wasn’t a compromise with the union; the NFLPA said it wasn’t even consulted.

So how does this impact Major League Baseball? More than you might think. There’s actually no rule on the national anthem in MLB right now — there’s not even a rule requiring that it be played at all — which makes baseball unique among the major North American sports. Both the NBA and WNBA require players to stand for the anthem. When asked by Seifert, an MLB spokesman said this:

While this is not a league rule, the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Canada remains an important tradition that has great meaning to our fans. The playing of ‘God Bless America’ at designated games is a club choice.

But the absence of a rule doesn’t mean this isn’t an issue. Orioles center fielder Adam Jones had told USA Today last year that he didn’t expect such a protest to occur — and then, two weeks later, A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell knelt during the national anthem before a game last year.

Maxwell’s decision to kneel came after President Donald Trump — speaking on Friday in Huntsville, Ala., where Maxwell grew up — made reference to NFL players not standing for the anthem as employees who, as he put it, should be fired by their teams. Maxwell, an African-American raised in a military family, joins Colin Kaepernick and other athletes in attempting to raise awareness about brutality and injustice at the hands of authorities by kneeling during the anthem.

Maxwell received relatively little pushback, but then, he was also the first MLB player to kneel during the anthem, at least in the 21st century. He also knelt for just two games, and said himself that his anthem protest wouldn’t continue this season.

So clearly the idea of anthem protests — and a policy banning them — is a controversial one, and the incidents which athletes are protesting continue to occur. It’s also one on which the MLBPA has thus far declined comment. If MLB wanted to create a Rule, like the NFL and NBA, requiring players to stand for the national anthem, could it?

Let’s start by examining some of the more popular tweets from Wednesday.

I hope NFL owners have the courage to come out against the league policy and tell their players they have the right to exercise the first amendment and will not be fined by the team for kneeling or protesting the flag.

— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) May 23, 2018

The NFL banning its players from kneeling is a chilling attack against the First Amendment and a racist policy against the majority African-American players who want to peacefully protest the injustice they face in their daily lives.

— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) May 23, 2018

Unfortunately the First Amendment doesn’t protect employers from infringing on employees rights to silent protests. Therefore, fuck the @NFL and stay in the locker rooms.

— EB83 (@EB2683) May 23, 2018

https://twitter.com/NotScottInSC/status/999341939261616132

This is a smattering of the prevailing back-and-forth on Twitter, which seems to focus on whether and how this policy impacts players’ First Amendment rights. However…

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the banged-up Mariners, Tyler Chatwood‘s wildness, the Astros’ record-setting run prevention, a Mike Trout milestone, Chris Davis and looking strikeouts, Ron Gardenhire‘s ringtone, Michael Taylor‘s walk-off face, settling a game with rock-paper scissors, bad closers, Nick Markakis, and more, then answer listener emails about strike sounds, “three up, three down,” Kyle Schwarber‘s defense, Shohei Ohtani’s home-run rates, starters as openers, famous players, bunting practice for prospects, Jordan Hicks and HBP danger, the “fair-foul hit,” intentional balks, and sunk costs, plus a Stat Blast about Colin Moran and a high-pitch homer.

Audio intro: Bahamas, "Stronger Than That"
Audio outro: Coldplay, "Bigger Stronger"

Link to Jay Jaffe’s Mike Trout post
Link to Ron Gardenhire video
Link to Michael Taylor face
Link to rock-paper-scissors story
Link to intentional-balk story
Link to ESPN’s world-fame list
Link to Jeff’s Colin Moran post

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Tuesday night, the Mariners started a game without Robinson Cano, Dee Gordon, and Nelson Cruz. I should say they also started without James Paxton, since it wasn’t his day to pitch. Eventually the Mariners ended the game without Mitch Haniger. Nevertheless, they beat the A’s in extra innings, improving to 28-19. It’s tied for the fourth-best start in franchise history, if you just focus on the first 47 games, and the Mariners own the fourth-best record in the American League. They own the sixth-best record overall. If the playoffs started today, people would be very confused, but also, the Mariners would be included, for the first time since 2001. For all intents and purposes, Ichiro Suzuki is retired. In 2001, he was a major-league rookie. This is, as you know, the longest active playoff drought out of the four major North American sports.

Cano suspension aside, the Mariners couldn’t have asked for a much better first two months. They’re on a 96.5-win pace, and it probably shouldn’t take 96 or 97 wins to make the playoffs, so there’s a little bit of built-in wiggle room. Without question, it’s good for the Mariners that they have sole possession of a wild-card slot. They’re 2.5 games ahead of the Angels. They’re 3.5 games ahead of the A’s, and they’re 5.5 games ahead of the Rays and the Blue Jays. The Twins trail six games behind. The early results are in the bag; since opening day, the Mariners have dramatically improved their position.

Yet the path to the playoffs remains narrow. With a dominant starter and a dominant closer, the Mariners would make for a challenging wild-card opponent. There’s just a lot of work to do first, before any of that even matters.

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Ned Yost took over as the manager of the Kansas City Royals on May 13, 2010. The fact that he still holds the position puts him in select company. Of the 30 current MLB managers, only five were skippering their current club at the start of the 2011 season, and only Mike Scioscia (1999) and Bruce Bochy (2006) can boast a longer tenure than can Yost.

Managerial turnover has been especially prevalent in recent years. A full third of the 30 weren’t in their current role at the start of last season, and half weren’t there on Opening Day 2016. This season alone has seen seven new faces at the helm.

In the first installment of a series — we’ll hear from a different manager each week, generally focusing on a specific subject — Yost shares his opinion on the recent influx of managerial turnover.

———

Ned Yost: “Oh man, you know… I think there are a lot of reasons for it. One, you have to have a great relationship with your owner and your GM. I think that helps. We have a phenomenal relationship in Kansas City with Mr. Glass and with Dayton [Moore]. There probably could have been three or four times where Dayton could have fired me. But I think Dayton understands that’s not going to solve a problem. And a lot of times it can make the problem worse.

“I got fired in Milwaukee in [September] 2008. At that point we were [16] games over .500. In 2009, they were under .500 with a different manager. I’m not saying… it’s just different. It tends to disrupt the flow that goes on.

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Because of what’s happened after the fact, I don’t know how good the Pirates currently feel about the Gerrit Cole trade. Cole, of course, has seen his strikeouts skyrocket with the Astros, even after moving to the more difficult league. But it’s not like the Pirates got nothing, and the key to the trade all along, for me, has been Colin Moran. Moran once looked like a bust of a prospect, but in 2017, in the minors, he unlocked his power. He was a swing-changer, and the changes seemingly paid off. Moran took to the air with his batted balls, and, fast-forward — through 143 plate appearances with Pittsburgh, Moran has a 130 wRC+. He’s been making a strong early impression.

Because Moran was a swing-changer, I found myself making an assumption. The way this usually goes is that a guy works to elevates pitches down in the zone. That, in turn, can make him exploitable up. We’ve been talking about the high fastball for years. Yet Moran did something in early April that caught my eye. His first home run with the Pirates was a grand slam, and here’s where the pitch was located:

Up above the belt. I didn’t think that was a pitch he could get to. My assumption was wrong. I also hadn’t seen anything yet.

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The Twins designated Phil Hughes for assignment on Monday, bringing to an apparent end the 31-year-old righty’s five-year run with the team and perhaps marking the end of his 12-year big league career. On a superficial level, his is a tale of a big-money contract gone wrong, as the Minnesota media — which knows red meat when it sees it, as fan perception of Joe Mauer’s long decline phase attests — was quick to take note of the team’s $22.6 million remaining salary commitment. On a deeper level, Hughes’ tenure with the team is a reminder of the fragility of pitchers’ bodies in general, and the ravages of thoracic outlet syndrome, for which Hughes underwent surgery not once but twice. The annals of such surgeries feature few happy endings.

Hughes had thrown just 12 innings this year, allowing four home runs while being pummeled for a 6.75 ERA and a 7.62 FIP. After starting the year on the disabled list due to an oblique strain, he returned on April 22 and failed to escape the fourth inning in either of his two starts. Sent to the bullpen, he made five appearances, the last three each separated by one day of rest. While his average fastball velocity (90.4 mph according to Pitch Info) was back up to where it was in 2015, his last reasonably healthy season, it sounds as though manager Paul Molitor felt hamstrung when it came to finding situations in which to use him.

“I guess it was somewhat comparable to almost a Rule 5 situation where you’re trying to find the right spots, and they were few and far between,” Molitor told reporters on Monday night.

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Episode 815
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and lead prospect analyst emeritus Kiley McDaniel analyze all prospects. Discussed: scenarios in which Casey Mize doesn’t go first overall, why Giants front-office members have been spotted in Atlanta, and how Cleveland could ruin the draft for a number of other clubs. Also: Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Juan Soto.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 58 min play time.)

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