It’s been a long season, so let me remind you of the start. These days, Sam Dyson is pretty good, and he pitches for the Giants. In April, Sam Dyson was pretty bad, and he was pitching for the Rangers. In the first game of the season, the Rangers led the Indians 5-3 in the seventh. The lead slipped away, and Dyson allowed three runs in the ninth to take the loss. In the third game of the season, the Rangers led the Indians 6-4 in the ninth. The lead slipped away, and Dyson allowed five runs to take the loss. The big knock was a one-out grand slam by Francisco Lindor; that currently stands as having been the third-highest-leverage plate appearance of the Indians’ year. The half-inning was as unforgettable as any half-inning can be in the first week of April.

The Indians got things started with a sweep, a sweep that featured plenty of good clutch hitting. That’s a great way to kick off a campaign, and it comes as little surprise that, in the middle of August, the team’s sitting fairly comfortably atop the AL Central. They’ve done well to hold off the Twins. They’ve done well to hold off the Royals. Ask the Indians, and they’d probably tell you they’ve expected to return to the playoffs from day one. They are plenty good enough. And yet in one sense, while the Indians have a good record, they’ve won despite their own efforts.

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Anthony Castro is emerging as one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers organization. Two years removed from Tommy John surgery and armed with plus stuff, the 22-year-old right-hander is 9-4 with a 2.70 ERA in 18 starts for the Low-A West Michigan Whitecaps.

Following his last outing, a coach for the opposing team was highly complimentary of Castro’s cutter, which is actually a mid-90s four-seam fastball that has natural cutting action. As the native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained, “It just comes out that way. That’s crazy.”

It’s not crazy to believe he’s ready to prove himself at the next level. As the aforementioned coach told me, “I’m not sure why the kid is still in the Midwest League.”

Castro has taken his family out of their homeland, and for perfectly understandable reasons: with the situation in Venezuela growing increasingly worse, the youngster feared for their safety and well-being.

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For much of the season, the Indians and Cubs appeared to be afflicted by the same sort of World Series hangover. Is it possible that last year’s Game 7 was so intense, crazy, joyous, and heartbreaking that its effects would linger? Most likely not, no, but it makes for a nice, tidy narrative anyway.

Some nine months after the epic, decisive game, however, an important part of the Indians’ roster appears to be getting its act together just as the high-leverage games of September and beyond draw near.

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On Monday, I talked a bit about the AL MVP race and how Chris Sale should pretty clearly be the frontrunner at this point. Over in the National League, though, it’s not really possible to write a completely honest piece advocating for just one single candidate, because as of mid-August, there are nearly 10 guys with legitimate cases for the award.

The likely leader in the clubhouse right now is Paul Goldschmidt. The case for him is pretty easy to make: he’s the best player on a team that wouldn’t be in the postseason race without him, and no one is clearly outplaying him. He’s fifth in batting average, third in on-base percentage, and sixth in slugging, and for those who are still into those kinds of things, third in RBIs. He leads the NL in WAR, so he’s not a Juan Gonzalez-type of traditional candidate who gets exposed by looking deeper. The Diamondbacks are pretty likely to make the Wild Card game, so he’ll probably get the playoff-team boost. Overall, he’s got something to offer pretty much every kind of voter and would almost certainly be the favorite to win the award if it were held today.

But while Goldschmidt probably would have the most diverse appeal among voters, and would almost certainly finish in the top two or three on the most ballots, he might not be the top choice for as many voters as you’d think. For one, Giancarlo Stanton is going to hit 50 home runs and might end up at 60, so for those who just want the best slugger, there’s a huge gap between Goldschmidt and the NL’s premier home-run hitter.

For voters who prefer RBI as their go-to offensive metric — and there are still some around — Nolan Arenado is an easy sell, as he leads the league in that category and plays a spectacular third base. His team is also a surprise contender who wouldn’t be one without him, and his batting average and home-run totals are nearly the equal of Goldschmidt’s, so for a voter who wants to stick to how MVPs were picked back in the day, Arenado looks every bit Goldschmidt’s equal on offense and offers more value in the field.

But both of those guys are playing for Wild Card teams, and Stanton’s team is out of the race entirely, so if any voters decided to limit their pool for the top spot to players only guaranteed a playoff spot — since the voting has to be turned in before the Wild Card game is played, perhaps such a voter would decide that a Wild Card-losing team didn’t actually make “the playoffs” — they’d still have a cornucopia of deserving candidates from which to pick.

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Below is an updated summer top-100 prospect list. Above are links to the top-10 lists for teams in each of the six divisions. Those include notes on why some of these prospects have moved up or down on their respective org list. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page, which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards. The preseason top-100 list is available here.

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While writing about Miguel Sano last week, I connected two thoughts that had laid dormant next to each other for a while.

Those thoughts, as follows:

1. It’s easier to lift and drive balls that appear in certain parts of the zone; and
2. How pitchers approach batters in terms of location is part of an endless loop of adjustments that makes judging a batter’s true talent difficult.

That confluence of ideas led to an innocuous enough question: could we adjust exit velocity for pitch location?

The answer is yes, of course we can. The next question, however, was much more interesting: what the heck does this measure?

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History was made on August 4. Technically, history was made again on August 13, and it was made again last night. It could be made again today, and it could be made further in any and every game hence. This is new history — expanding and developing history. It’s history without any limit. God only knows where the tally will stop. There is ever so much baseball to play.

Yet the moment of greatest significance occurred on August 4. Nearly two weeks ago, the Angels played a game against the A’s, with Troy Scribner starting opposite Jharel Cotton. It was a game I doubt that you watched, and it was an 8.5-inning game that somehow lasted more than three and a half hours. As the Angels batted in the bottom of the first, Mike Trout came up with one down and picked up an infield single on a grounder to short. That brought to the plate Albert Pujols, and Cotton gave Pujols a first pitch that he liked. Pujols saw the pitch, and he swung at it. His swing still basically looks the same as it ever has. Pujols swung, and he even made contact. Another grounder to short. The result of this one was different.

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The Astros’ best player this year has been Jose Altuve, and it isn’t particularly close. The second baseman is one of the leading candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player award. After Altuve, the best players on the team are probably George Springer and Carlos Correa, though Springer spent some time on the disabled list recently and Correa remains there now. After that group, there’s Marwin Gonzalez, who’s hitting out of his mind, and a collection of other adequate players on the position-player side.

As a team, the Astros have an MLB-leading 127 wRC+, miles ahead of the second-place Dodgers, who sit 16 points back. With Altuve, Correa, and Springer leading the way, the Astros offense has been great all year. A slow start moved Alex Bregman from the all-important second spot in the lineup down to the eighth spot for much of the season. Over the past two months, however — in somewhat quiet fashion– he’s become one of Houston’s most important players.

It’s possible that Bregman’s profile doesn’t lend itself to stardom the same way some of his teammates’ profiles do. His relative lack of notoriety, however, might just be a result of the way he entered the majors.

Consider the following players:

Player A was taken with the second-overall pick in the draft out of college and, less than a year later, was destroying Double-A pitching. He was a top-20 prospect and, by midseason, had become the top prospect in the game according to Keith Law. At that point, he was promoted to Triple-A, where spent the rest of the season performing extremely well. He entered the following season as baseball’s top prospect and subsequently won Rookie of the Year.

Player B was taken with the second-overall pick in the draft out of college and, less than a year later, was destroying Double-A pitching. He entered the season as a top-20-ish prospect (No. 42 was on the low end) and, by midseason, had become the top prospect in the game according to Keith Law. At that point, he was promoted to Triple-A and crushed it, but only stayed there briefly before getting promoted to the big leagues and holding his own. He then lost his prospect eligibility, any Rookie of the Year buzz, and got off to a slow start.

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