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Chad Green’s 2-0 win-loss record and 2.05 ERA suggest he’s had a successful season. Those numbers only begin to tell the story. Pitching out of the New York Yankees bullpen, the 26-year-old right-hander has allowed just 27 hits in 57 innings while also recording 86 strikeouts. Doing the math, that’s 4.3 hits per nine and 13.6 strikeouts per nine. Augmenting those stellar stats is a 0.74 WHIP, which ranks as third best in baseball, behind only Craig Kimbrel (0.67) and Kenley Jansen (0.69).

Yesterday — in his 31st appearance on the season — the former Tigers prospect became the first pitcher in MLB history to record seven strikeouts while facing eight or fewer batters in a game. In December 2015, the Yankees acquired Green, along with Luis Cessa, in exchange for Justin Wilson.

Spin and velocity are among his closest friends. Green’s arsenal includes a solid slider, but his signature pitch is a four-seam fastball that zooms through the zone at an average speed of 95.5 mph. Thanks to a well above-average 2,478 spin rate, the University of Louisville product gets plenty of punch outs above the belt.

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Green on the reasons behind his breakout: “Last year, I figured out what I needed to work on, and this year it’s been about consistency. Last year, I wasn’t consistent. Some days I would have a good breaking ball, and some days I wouldn’t. Some days I would have good fastball command, and some days I wouldn’t.

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Earlier this season, there was a disagreement between Adrian Beltre and myself about how long I was permitted to remain in the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field. I was there waiting on one of Beltre’s teammates (now ex-Ranger Jonathan Lucroy). The rest of the modestly sized media contingent had departed and the media-relations representative was nowhere to be found. I was the last reporter remaining. Beltre asked from his locker about 20 feet away why I was still in the clubhouse. He suggested I leave.

I motioned toward the time on the wall-mounted digital clock and explained I had a few minutes remaining. I have rights as a BBWAA card holder! He disagreed. Feeling outnumbered, feeling now as something of a trespasser — and preferring to fight another day and over something more significant — I attempted to depart the clubhouse with my dignity.

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Think about the teams in the American League wild-card race. Focus on the teams gunning for the second position. Focus further still, on their various starting rotations. They’re bad! They’re pretty much all bad. Or, if “bad” feels too cruel, we could go with “lacking.” All of them are lacking. I don’t know if the Orioles have the worst rotation in the group, but they’ve received maybe the most notice for being so thin. It’s not like it hasn’t been deserved.

Chris Tillman was supposed to be good, and his season’s been a nightmare. Ubaldo Jimenez wasn’t supposed to be nearly as good, but his season has also been terrible. Kevin Gausman has yet to make that leap people always figure he’s on the verge of making. The Orioles traded for Jeremy Hellickson when his strikeout rate was under 14%. There’s been so little, for so many months. The Orioles are in the race despite their rotation, not because of it. They’ve just been waiting for someone, anyone, to step up.

And now, Dylan Bundy is stepping up. Of the Orioles’ rotation value over the past several weeks, Bundy has accounted for almost all of it. I don’t think a pitcher can become an ace in the matter of one month. But if one could, that month would look a lot like Bundy’s August.

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Hey, remember this guy?

It was Greg Bird, not Aaron Judge or Gary Sanchez, who was the talk of Yankees camp while producing eight home runs and a 1.654 OPS over 51 at-bats. It was Bird who seemed poised to build upon a promising 178-plate-appearance sample as a rookie in 2015 (.261/.343/.529 slash line and 137 wRC+) after missing all of 2016 with a labrum tear.

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For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, let me set the scene real quick. The Mariners are involved in that big giant fight for the AL’s second wild-card position. None of the teams in the picture are actually good, but all anyone will need is one more win than the rest of the pack. At that point, the playoffs will beckon, and, who knows? So that’s part of it. The other part is that the Mariners’ rotation was supposed to include James Paxton, Felix Hernandez, Drew Smyly, and Hisashi Iwakuma. Right now the rotation includes none of them. On the year, the Mariners’ rotation ranks 28th in baseball in WAR. Over the past month, they’re dead last, a few hairs below replacement. What do you do when you have a rotation that’s bad? One of the things you can do, I suppose, is acquire Mike Leake.

In part because of Luke Weaver, Leake became expendable in St. Louis. He remains under contract through 2020. Here are the details of the swap:

Mariners get

• Mike Leake
• $0.75 million in international bonus space
• About $17 million in salary relief (via Ken Rosenthal)

Cardinals get

• Rayder Ascanio
• Relief from the rest of Leake’s contract

The Mariners have added yet another back-end starter. At least this one is a little different from the others.

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Admit it, you’ve wondered. Not you, the former Division I baseball player or the major leaguer who’s maybe reading this. I mean you, the former pony-league baseball kid who maybe got a cup of coffee with the varsity in a nondescript high school league: you’ve wondered if, given a full season’s chance — say, 600 plate appearances — you could get a single major league hit.

Maybe you haven’t. I certainly have. And so has MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes.

It’s easy to argue that he wouldn’t. Just making contact requires sufficient bat speed to catch up to the incoming pitch speed, and the difference between a layperson’s bat speed and a professional one is stark. I’ve linked this image recently, but this time it’s for the stats on the left. Take a look at how much faster Hunter Pence can swing a bat than I can.

Pence nearly doubles my bat speed and gets to the ball three times quicker. Maybe we mere fans just couldn’t connect with the hard stuff. And that’s on the fastball. What happens when a pitcher starts throwing the bendy stuff?

Hayes wondered the same. “I was recently at a batting cage and spent about half an hour, got the speed up to 70 mph, and after enough of them I was more or less getting around, though mostly fouling pitches off, with occasional solid contact,” he wrote in an email. “BUT: no breaking balls and no pitches out of the zone. I just think any major leaguer would be able to just terrify me with a first pitch fastball and then get me to chase garbage out of the zone and that would happen for literally an entire season.”

But isn’t this a question of numbers in the end? Over 600 plate appearances, more than 2000 pitches… couldn’t you swing as hard as possible middle-in and eventually get one measly hit?

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I was in the Dodgers clubhouse before a game last week at PNC Park when the Sports Illustrated cover was released featuring Justin Turner immersed in Gatorade, the orange liquid nearly a match for the hue of his iconic mane and facial hair.

The amiable Turner was of particular interest that day due to his cover-boy status. He accommodated round after round of media interviews before his locker in the road clubhouse. The Dodgers have perhaps the largest traveling media contingent in the National League.

I waited not for not an interview but an introduction. As someone who has promoted the Air Ball Revolution, I wanted to express my appreciation for his work and to note our mutual acquaintance, private hitting instructor Doug Latta, who helped Turner rebuild his swing and philosophy. In passing, I asked Turner not about the photo (which is tremendous), but about a passage from the accompanying article by Stephanie Apstein.

[Justin Turner] persuaded a fringe major leaguer with a career .598 OPS to spend last offseason overhauling his mechanics; Chris Taylor, now a starting outfielder, has been L.A.’s best second-half hitter, with an OPS of 1.105. Since Turner assigned right fielder Puig five pushups for every grounder he hit in spring training, Puig has pounded the ball harder than in any season since his first. Turner cues up the curveball machine and challenges 22-year-old rookie first baseman Cody Bellinger to fly ball competitions, with the winner taking home $10 per session. “I’m down a little bit,” Bellinger admits. It’s worth the lighter wallet, though: His .800 slugging percentage on curves is second in baseball. The team as a whole has cut its ground ball rate by 8%, the biggest drop in the league.

I’ve previously explored the idea of how air-ball advocates like Daniel Murphy might influence teammates in positive way, how they might be adding value simply by communicating ideas.

Turner is another.

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