It was an eventful 24 hours for the Cleveland Indians outfield. On Tuesday, left fielder Michael Brantley sprained his ankle in a game against the Colorado Rockies, so Wednesday, the team put him on the disabled list and promptly traded for his replacement, Jay Bruce.

Because Bruce cleared waivers last week, the transaction was fairly straightforward. The Mets already knew they weren’t going to get much for him, as every team in baseball passed on taking on the remaining $4 million of his contract. So when Cleveland suddenly needed an outfielder, it represented a chance for the Mets to at least save some money while also freeing up playing time for Dominic Smith at first base. In exchange for assuming responsibility for the remainder of Bruce’s contract this year, Cleveland surrendered just RHP Ryder Ryan, a player so notable that this is the first time his name has ever been mentioned on the site.

Here’s what you need to know about Ryan: he was a 30th-round pick in the 2016 draft and is pitching in relief in A-ball as a 22-year-old. This trade isn’t exactly like the Indians claiming Bruce on waivers and the Mets just letting him go, but it’s basically that.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about live shows, bounced throws, the spread of “such is life,” stats displayed on baseball broadcasts, more strange fields, a Dan Haren rules question, and the best non-All-Star seasons, then answer more listener emails about the Angels and Albert Pujols, an odd Brian Dozier game, crooked numbers, Chris Tillman’s first-inning problems, the Dodgers’ World Series odds, Corey Kluber’s breaking-ball usage, and more.
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About a month ago, the notion of adding Yu Darvish seemed to be something of a luxury for the Dodgers. After all, not only had the Dodgers emerged as the best team in baseball, they had entered the season with the most pitching depth in the game.

But then Clayton Kershaw was sent to the DL, a place where Rich Hill, Scott Kazmir and Hyun-Jin Ryu have resided at times this season — and where they have been placed often throughout their careers. Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time when we talk about Mike Trout, we ask if anybody has ever done what he’s doing. Sometimes the answer is Mickey Mantle or Ty Cobb or Albert Pujols, but a lot of the time the answer is no and what Trout is doing is unprecedented. Today, we are asking two related questions:

1. Could Mike Trout deserve the American League Most Valuable Player Award despite missing 39 games earlier this season?
2. Does Mike Trout have a realistic chance to win MVP despite missing 39 games earlier this season?

While answering the second question might help prove the first through precedent, let’s restrict ourselves in the first part to the value Mike Trout provides. On Friday, I talked about Jose Altuve’s candidacy for MVP and showed this chart:

Things have already changed considerably. This is what the top of that chart looks like now.

So Trout is currently projected to be the AL position player WAR leader at the end of the season. If he keeps up his current pace and gets close to the the 200 more plate appearances he is projected for, he is going to get above 8 WAR. Trout is currently above a 200 wRC+, a number that hasn’t been reached since Barry Bonds and done by only nine players in non-strike seasons in history. He will actually have to exceed his projections in PAs to qualify for the batting title, as he is currently set to fall eight short. Read the rest of this entry »

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Joey Votto hasn’t made a West Coast swing recently so we don’t have original words to annotate here, but he did say some interesting things to Zach Buchanan at The Cincinnati Enquirer this week, interesting particularly because he said that “This has been documented, so this is not anecdotal here,” and that sort of statement is like catnip around here. Let’s provide the documentation.

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Over the last few years, the A’s have had a high-end player problem, in that they haven’t had any. Jed Lowrie currently leads the team with +2.3 WAR; by comparison, the Astros have seven players who have already reached that mark, and that does not include their best pitcher, Dallas Keuchel, who spent two months on the DL. The team has developed some decent role players and decent enough everyday players, but they haven’t really had a franchise player since they traded Josh Donaldson to Toronto.

Without getting too far ahead of ourselves, I am starting to wonder if they’ve finally found a guy who at least has the potential to get to that level in the not too distant future. His name is Matt Chapman.

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CLEVELAND — When I asked Josh Donaldson about being a founding father of the fly-ball revolution recently in the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field, he re-directed the credit. The creator of the air-ball, upper-cut philosophy was Ted Williams, he noted.

Donaldson knows his history.

Williams, of course, co-authored the book The Science of Hitting. He talked about impacting the lower half of the ball. It seems like that should be required reading for all professional hitters, but I wonder what is the actual percentage of pro hitters who have read the book?

What is interesting to this author is how Donaldson arrived at his philosophy. It wasn’t from watching grainy black-and-white video of Williams. In my conversation with the right-handed slugger, he did not reference having read Williams’ thoughts as being the impetus for his belief changes. No, Donaldson arrived and adopted the #GroundballsSuck concept through what he describes as his “first love”: golf. Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t a big surprise when Justin Verlander stayed in Detroit at the July 31st trade deadline, because for Verlander, the 31st wasn’t really a deadline. With $28 million salaries for each of the next two years, he wasn’t in much danger of being claimed on waivers; sure enough, he reportedly went unclaimed last week, and is again free to be traded to any team in baseball. And now that prospective buyers don’t have the distraction of other possible options, it might actually be easier for the Tigers to trade Verlander this month than it was in July.

Of course, easier doesn’t mean easy. As Jeff noted a month ago, there appears to be something of a gap between how the Tigers see Verlander and how the rest of the league sees him. Detroit seemingly is shopping him as if he’s still the ace he pitched like last season, not the average-ish starter he’s pitched like this season. And Jeff’s piece laid out why that isn’t a totally unreasonable position.

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