George Springer is hitting for contact.

Much has been written about how, this year, the Astros have easily the lowest strikeout rate in baseball. One of the most strikeout-heavy lineups around has opted to put the bat on the ball, and now the Astros have a giant lead in wRC+. Part of that improvement in contact comes from adding players like Josh Reddick and Brian McCann. Part of that improvement in contact comes from the emergence of Yulieski Gurriel. And part of that improvement in contact comes from George Springer’s improvement in contact.

Young players improve. When you start to learn the major leagues, you tend to get better. But this — this is extraordinary. This isn’t just a young Astros player doing better at baseball. This is *George Springer,* making contact on a consistent basis, and if that doesn’t immediately grab your attention, perhaps it’s because you’ve forgotten what Springer used to be.

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Episode 768
If a general manager were guaranteed that an amateur prospect would produce two-and-half wins in the majors just two years after joining an organization, that general manager would almost certainly draft the relevant prospect in the first round — if not among the the top-10 or even top-five picks of that first round. Cardinals shortstop Paul DeJong has recorded two-and-a-half wins in the majors two years after being drafted — and yet was selected in the fourth round out of Illinois State. DeJong, Jose Martinez, and Tommy Pham entered the season with fewer than two career wins between them; they’ve produced more than 9.0 WAR, however, in 2017. Who’s the next great Cardinals non-prospect? Eric Longenhagen speculates on this and a number of other concerns.

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You’re probably aware that the torrid Cleveland Indians have taken over the top run-differential spot in baseball and the No. 1 playoff seed in the AL.

You’re probably also aware that the Dodgers still hold the best record in baseball despite looking beyond terrible in September.

But did you know the Dodgers no longer hold the No. 2 run-differential spot in the sport? It’s true. That distinction now belongs to the Yankees, who entered play Monday having outscored the opposition by 62 runs (191 runs scored, 129 runs allowed) since August 14. And following last night’s victory over Minnesota, New York has now won 20 of their last 31 games.

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Give it enough chances and baseball will make you look bad, because at the end of the day, baseball’s a fair game, sufficiently fair that everyone is bound to think it isn’t every once in a while. Baseball can be mean to players at the bottom of the roster, sure, but baseball can also be mean to, say, Miguel Cabrera. It can be mean to Mike Trout! And it can be mean to Clayton Kershaw. Monday evening, it made Kershaw look bad in the blink of an eye.

In his career, when the bases have been loaded, Kershaw hasn’t been perfect. Baseball makes it impossible to be perfect. Kershaw had allowed bases-loaded hits. He’d allowed a bases-loaded double, five times. He’d issued a bases-loaded walk, six times. Once, Kershaw was responsible for a bases-loaded hit-by-pitch. Another time, he was responsible for a bases-loaded balk. For good measure, there was also once a bases-loaded wild pitch. Even before Monday, with the bases loaded, Kershaw had made mistakes. But he’d never allowed a home run. When Kershaw woke up Monday morning, he didn’t know how it felt to give up a big-league grand slam. When he went to bed, it was probably all he could think about.

Aaron Altherr. Officially, Aaron Altherr is the reason Kershaw can’t ever catch up to Jim Palmer.

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Ten months ago, Jose Bautista hit the free-agent market. Even coming off a down year, he looked like one of the best hitters available. However, Bautista was caught up in the cratering market for bat-only sluggers and, after a few months of just moderate interest, eventually re-signed with the Blue Jays on a one-year deal.

Now, with that contract expiring in a few weeks, it looks quite possible that not only will Jose Bautista not be returning to Toronto next year, but we might be seeing the last few weeks of Bautista’s major-league career.

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Every team that ever trades is rolling the dice. Nothing in baseball has ever been certain, and so to make a trade is to gamble. But the gamble, typically, is that the player being traded for will continue to perform as he has. At least, this is how it is with veterans. The Astros gambled that Justin Verlander would keep on pitching like Justin Verlander. The Angels gambled that Justin Upton would keep on hitting like Justin Upton. The Yankees gambled that Sonny Gray would keep on pitching like Sonny Gray. Over any full season, you never know what a player’s going to do. When you narrow to just a few months, the volatility only increases.

There’s nothing to be done about that kind of gamble. You can’t make sample-based uncertainty certain. You just hope a player’s talent level will shine through. But more rarely, a team will make a different kind of gamble. A gamble on a player the team thinks it can fix. Needless to say, the teams aren’t always right. Every team already tries to get the most out of the players it has. Yet the Dodgers, in July, thought they saw something in Tony Cingrani, and so far, they’re looking brilliant. Nobody’s noticed, but Cingrani’s kicked it up.

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With still roughly two weeks left in the regular season, the divisional races across the major leagues have sputtered and nearly died. Three divisions have already been clinched. The Los Angeles Dodgers have already guaranteed themselves a playoff berth and should secure the National League West in short order. Beyond the Wild Card races, then, the NL Central and AL East remain the only hope for meaningful baseball over the season’s closing weeks. The Cubs have a four-game lead in the former and 96.6% odds of taking the division. The Red Sox, meanwhile, possess a three-game lead in the latter and 89.6% odds.

The Cubs have four games this week with the Brewers in Milwaukee. That series has a chance to facilitate some of the season’s most consequential games, provided Milwaukee can remain within striking distance of Chicago in the meantime. As for the Red Sox, though, don’t play the second-place Yankees again, which will make it tougher for the latter club to make up ground.

The bright side of having these races more or less decided is that we can start to look at the potential rosters for the League Division Series a little sooner. I’ll begin today with the American League. For the purposes of this exercise, I’ll proceed by the odds and regard the Red Sox as the presumptive winners of the East. If that turns out not to be the case, feel free to come back here in October and squawk at me.

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No respectable prospect list has ever read as a leaderboard of minor-league on-base percentages. There are a million other important considerations, details that help to fill out a profile. That being said, the best hitting prospects tend to avoid making too many outs, and when you don’t make outs, you get a high OBP. Vladimir Guerrero Jr.‘s OBP this year was .425. Bo Bichette‘s OBP was .423. Lewis Brinson’s OBP was .400, and Rhys Hoskins‘ OBP was .385. Scouts are always repeating that minor-league numbers aren’t that important, but then, minor-league competition is awfully good, and the numbers show who’s most often winning the battles.

Guerrero and Bichette are both in the Blue Jays organization, and they’re considered two of the better position-player prospects anywhere. They wrapped up their seasons with High-A Dunedin, but the teenagers opened with Single-A Lansing. Down there, they were the stars of the roster, but they had one particularly unusual teammate. A teammate who fell short of Guerrero’s OBP by only four points. This player reached base in more than two-fifths of his plate appearances. He also registered a hit in barely one-fifth of his at-bats. He knocked all of one single home run, out of just about 300 opportunities. There’s nobody else quite like Nick Sinay.

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