The All-Star Game and its various related events are behind us, and the game has collectively taken a breath for a couple of days (except for the Cubs and White Sox, but I digress). The numbers for the first half are in the books, giving us an opportunity to reflect on what has already happened and what it might portend for the second half of the season.

In this space I will often analyze players by examining plate appearance frequency and contact quality (for hitters) and contact management (for pitchers) information for pitchers, using granular data to see how players “should be” performing to get a better handle on their true talent and performance levels. Today, let’s use some of this data in a slightly different manner, identifying players with common statistical markers that can tell us something very good or very bad about those player “families.”

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You can expect that Sonny Gray will be traded. Something could happen to get in the way, but it’s likely that Gray will shortly be on the move. Although the A’s are just as close to a playoff spot as the Braves, who have been talked about as a buyer, the A’s just yesterday dealt away from their bullpen, and so it’s clear to see what they’re doing. They saw what the White Sox got for Jose Quintana. They know that Gray is the next in line, as a cost-controlled quality starting pitcher.

Now, Gray is not Quintana. Gray’s had more recent arm trouble, and while Quintana has club options through 2020, Gray’s controlled through 2019. The A’s can’t expect the same kind of package, because the contract matters, and because just last season, Gray was not very good. Still, his value has rebounded, now that he again has his health. Gray could well be in the middle of the next blockbuster. He’s back, but as a different pitcher from before.

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A month ago, I looked at the teams that looked to be buying, selling, or still making up their mind as we headed towards the trade season. Now that trade season is officially here, and some things have changed in the last month, let’s take a look at where things stand with two two weeks before the deadline.

First, let’s just look at the changes in playoff odds for every team since the last time we looked at who would be buying and selling.

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At the beginning of the season, the Blue Jays were a clear playoff contender. In the American League, only Boston, Cleveland, and Houston had higher playoff odds than Toronto’s 52.1%. On June 1, those odds had dropped considerably, down to 36.3%, but were still near the top of the heap. The only other AL team that had passed them in those first two months of the season were the New York Yankees. Things improved briefly afterward, but then they took a turn south again. Let’s take a look:

That dark blue line on top represents the Blue Jays. Well, it’s on top for a portion of the graph on the left — the equivalent of a few weeks — before descending to roughly 25%, where it meets up with the rest of the pack. Now, Toronto’s no longer the top dog in the race for the second Wild Card, they’re just… dog.

All told, Toronto’s probability of qualifying for the postseason in any form has declined from 36.3% to 18.0%, including their loss yesterday in Detroit. In other words: not great.

But as Craig Edwards noted just over a month ago, there are quite a few American League clubs with a reasonable chance of claiming a Wild Card spot. Today, I’d like to focus on Toronto, specifically — and, in particular, why the odds might be in their favor.

No Strong Reason To Sell

Toronto doesn’t have a player who’s due to hit free agency after the season who’s also likely to bring back a sizable return. Some of their free agents to be — Darwin Barney, Chris Coghlan, Marco Estrada, J.P. Howell, Francisco Liriano, Miguel Montero, and Joe Smith — would fetch something of marginal value, but not the sort of package that’s going to kickstart a major rebuild.

Two of the club’s players, meanwhile — Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki — are well into their 30s and are signed to long-term contracts that will prevent a return of great substance. Tulowitzki might not even be tradeable at this point. As for Josh Donaldson, he would absolutely receive interest from many clubs. Given that he missed time this year and didn’t make the All-Star team, though, the Blue Jays wouldn’t exactly be selling high on him. The better strategy may be to let him remind everyone of his true MVP form and move him in the offseason.

Offense Can’t Be Any Worse

If you look at the team leaderboards, you’ll see that the Blue Jays appear near the bottom in terms of Offense. Specifically, they place 24th, when you take out pitchers’ hitting. But much of that stems from their horrid April. In April, the team’s wRC+ was just 71. It hasn’t been as bad since — 114 in May, 91 in June, and 85 in July. Obviously there’s a downward trend there since May, but April is still dragging down their season numbers. Also, some of the players who haven’t been hitting are either not playing now (Coghlan, Luke Maile) or are localized to one position (like Barney and Ryan Goins at second base).

More importantly, the projections haven’t given up on them. Our depth charts still see Toronto as possessing the seventh-best offense the rest of the way. Looking at season-to-date wOBA vs. projected rest-of-season wOBA, all of the team’s regulars save Justin Smoak and Russell Martin are expected to post wOBAs 10 points or more higher the rest of the way.

Second Base Can Be Upgraded

The depth-chart projections also reveal that the Blue Jays are projected to derive 0.0 WAR from their second-base situation the rest of the way. Literally replacement level. Devon Travis is an impressive talent, but he is frequently hurt. In his place, Barney and Goins have been a terrifyingly terrible platoon. Enter Dee Gordon rumors. It’s hard to know what the cost would be for the Marlins’ second baseman, given the possibility that the Marlins will take less if the team to which they deal him agrees to eat a bunch/all of his contract. Toronto has shown a willingness to do just that in the past, and may do so again. It would create a headache for the team when Travis is healthy enough to return, but the bet is that Travis could work his way into the outfield mix to stay in the lineup.

Gordon makes sense because he would not only be an upgrade for the rest of this season (0.6 WAR), but he’s signed to a cheap, long-term contract. But there could be other keystone players on the market. It’s not hard to see the Padres trading Yangervis Solarte or the Phillies dealing Howie Kendrick. Perhaps if Neil Walker can get back on the field the Mets will deal him. There will be options. When your current players are literally replacement-level players, then most anyone represents an upgrade. The Blue Jays can upgrade, in other words, without breaking into the vault.

The Bullpen Is Fine

One of the reasons the Blue Jays can avoid the fire sale for another year is that they really don’t need to upgrade their bullpen. As Jeff wrote last week, Roberto Osuna has been just about perfect, and with Aaron Sanchez back in the rotation, Joe Biagini is transitioning back to the bullpen. He’s working low-leverage situations for now, but it probably won’t be long before he’s back in a setup role. This is good news for Toronto. Biagini’s season splits for start vs. relief look similar now because he was rocked in his second relief stint back just before the break, but from the beginning of the season until May 3rd (before he was put in the rotation), he posted a 3.38 ERA / 2.82 FIP / 3.18 xFIP, with a 58.3% ground-ball rate and 19.7-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%).

Biagin will join Osuna, Danny Barnes, Joe Smith (who is set to return this week), seasoned-lefty killer Aaron Loup and less-seasoned lefty killer Jeff Beliveau. It’s not a group filled with household names, but they’ve been getting the job done. All told, they’ve been the eighth-best unit in the game by WAR.

Teams that need to spend big at the trade deadline to improve their bullpen are often in a precarious spot. Why make a big push to add players who may not make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things to aid a playoff push that may only result in one extra game? This may be the case for teams like the Mariners and Rays, but it won’t be the case for Toronto.

Aaron Sanchez

Last season, the California native posted a 3.00 ERA, and his 3.9 WAR was the 17th best among all pitchers and eighth best in the AL. This season, he’s made just seven starts and tossed just 32 innings while dealing with right-middle-finger issues. But he’s back now, and in his second start back from the disabled list on Friday, he threw six innings of one-run ball against Detroit. By Game Score v 2.0, it was his second-best start of the season, with his best coming in his season debut back in April. A healthy Sanchez will make a big difference for a starting rotation that has held its own without him.

Not much has gone right for Toronto this season. They started out as one of the favorites and have slunk further and further back to the pack as the season has progressed. But they should start hitting better, they have one of their best starting pitchers back, and they have a good bullpen. Second base is a major black hole, but it can be upgraded without costing them their future. Things have looked better for the Blue Jays, but don’t count them out just yet.

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Jay Groome recently found himself in the news for reasons not of his doing. Thirteen months ago, he was in the news for reasons that were: the 6-foot-6 left-hander was drafted 12th overall by the Red Sox out of a New Jersey high school. He could have gone even higher. As our own Eric Longenhagen wrote this spring, Groome was “arguably the most talented prospect in the 2016 draft.”

Given his age and experience level, it is very much raw talent. The 18-year-old southpaw has just 10 professional games under his belt, the last four of which have come with Low-A Greenville. Groome’s calling card is a curveball that Longenhagen called “potential plus-plus,” and his fastball has been clocked as high as 97 mph.

Groome talked about his nascent development — and his power repertoire — in late June.

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Groome on having a simple approach: “Everything I’ve learned — everything I know — comes from my father, or from myself, just trying to perfect my craft. I’ve always done what feels good for me and what looks good. I just throw all of my pitches.

“A couple of times on the showcase circuit they would have the Trackman, but I never paid attention to it. I’ve never looked into what my spin rate is, or anything like that. I’m not a big physics guy on how all that stuff translates to them hitting the ball or not hitting the ball. I just go out there and throw the ball and try to hit my spots; and if they hit it, they hit it, and if they don’t, they don’t.”

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Milwaukee at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Suter (27.1 IP, 94 xFIP-) vs. Kuhl (85.1 IP, 110 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly calculated algorithm has identified today’s Brewers-Pirates game as the day’s most compelling due partly to Milwaukee’s chances of winning the division (about 64% accrording to the coin-flip method) and also to Brent Suter’s surprising competence as a member of the Brewers’ rotation (he’s recorded an 83 xFIP- over three starts). Why else that algorithm has identified this game as the day’s most compelling, though, is due to the pace at which Suter works.

Consider the following table, which includes the top pace marks by starting pitchers (minimum 10 innings):

What one finds here is that Suter works a second faster per pitch than the next resident on this list, Madison Bumgarner, and that he works two seconds more quickly per pitch than the sixth-fastest-working pitcher. League average among starters is 23.6 seconds between pitches, or roughly six seconds slower than Suter. Over the course of a 100 pitches, in other words, Brent Suter saves 10 minutes of everyone’s life — time which one can then dedicate to the consumption of a long Russian novel or other improving book.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee Radio.

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There was a time when Griffin Canning looked like a sure-fire first-round pick in this year’s draft. The UCLA ace had a dominant 2017 season, ranking sixth in the nation in total strikeouts while exhibiting promising stuff, good command, and smooth mechanics. He seemed like the type of pitcher who could fly through a farm system and quickly make a big-league impact. Three days before the draft, Baseball America predicted that Canning would be selected by the Yankees with the 16th-overall pick.

Yet when draft day came on June 12, dozens of picks passed by without his selection. Every team in the first round passed on him, as did every team in the competitive-balance round. In the latter stages of MLB Network’s draft telecast, Canning was chosen by the Angels with the 47th-overall pick. On June 9, he appeared destined for a $3,458,600 bonus — that is, the value MLB had assigned to the 16th pick. Instead, he took the $1,459,200 earmarked for the 47th selection. In a matter of days, Canning watched his expected price tag get slashed by 58%.

The cause of Canning’s draft-stock plummet was an ominous MRI that revealed a vulnerable pitching elbow and shoulder. These injury concerns are not a surprise; last month, I examined the workloads of the draft’s top college pitchers and found that the star UCLA Bruin was used very heavily. His alarming usage rates and murky MRI warrant a deeper investigation of how longtime UCLA head coach John Savage manages his pitchers. Is Canning’s case emblematic of a culture of overuse in the program? Let’s check.

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No trade-deadline need has ever been clearer, has ever been more obvious, than the Nationals’ need to acquire some help in the bullpen. It’s been an annual concern, which means you could call the Nationals front office experienced, but the bullpen this year has been a disaster. They still have a massive lead in their division! A playoff entry is all but guaranteed. Yet the Nationals want to someday get beyond just making the playoffs. They’d like to win a damn series, and these last few months, they haven’t had good relievers.

Do you consider yourself a fan of our in-house statistics? The Nationals bullpen ranks last in baseball in WAR. Do you prefer to give more credit for events that have actually happened? The Nationals bullpen ranks last in baseball in RA9-WAR. If you’re bigger on storytelling statistics, the Nationals bullpen ranks 26th in baseball in WPA. To address the area, the Nats have swapped with the bullpen that ranks 27th in baseball in WPA. Here are the players:

Nationals get

• Sean Doolittle
• Ryan Madson

Athletics get

• Blake Treinen
• Jesus Luzardo
• Sheldon Neuse

On paper, this is a big double-get for the Nats. On paper, these were some of the better relievers available. Certainly, moving forward, Dusty Baker can feel better about his bullpen than he did yesterday or the day before. The risk is that things aren’t always as promising as they look on paper. The Nationals know that better than most teams.

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