Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about high fastballs and the Red Sox, Carter Capps, the Nationals bullpen, the Giants’ clubhouse chemistry with Mark Melancon (and without Ángel Pagán), then discuss the Dodgers’ enviable present and future and whether anything can end their NL West hegemony. After that, they close with some episode-ending banter about the Adeiny Hechavarria trade and the official start of trading season.

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There’s a youth movement taking place in Oakland. The A’s jettisoned both Trevor Plouffe and Stephen Vogt in the last couple of weeks, replacing them with Matt Chapman and Bruce Maxwell. Another big splash came this weekend, when Oakland summoned prospect Franklin Barreto to play second base.

Barreto continued to hit for an encouraging amount of power as a minor leaguer this year, especially considering he played in a park that massively suppresses homers (by PCL standards). However, his strikeout rate spiked from 18% to 30% as he transitioned from Double-A and Triple-A and his stolen-base numbers plummeted. As a result, his KATOH forecast has taken a hit. I have him projected for 4.8 WAR over his first six seasons by stats-only KATOH and 5.4 WAR by KATOH+, which incorporates his prospect ranking. Those marks place him 90th and 55th, respectively, among prospects, down from 18th and 20th in the preseason.

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Adam Ottavino had three wild pitches this year before Sunday’s game.

That’s one of those opening sentences that doesn’t bode well for what happened next. You can’t reduce your wild-pitch total, and it’s generally not newsworthy when someone throws just one wild pitch, regardless of how devastating the ramifications of that errant throw are. For this sort of thing to be newsworthy, Ottavino would have had to commit a particularly nasty act of self-immolation.

Well, he did. Ottavino threw four wild pitches, and runs scored on all four of them. The Rockies scored six runs. Because of the wild pitches, though, they lost. It’s not what you want if you’re a Rockies fan.

A Tommy John survivor, Ottavino’s had a much rougher time putting the ball where he wants it to go this season. He carried a 14% walk rate into Sunday, the ninth-worst mark among qualified relievers. Then he walked three of the nine batters he faced. A walk rate that high is never all that great, but it helps that Ottavino can also strike guys out. He boasts a mid-90s fastball and a slider so notorious that it has its own Twitter account. When it’s on, it’s disgusting, and that’s the state it’s usually in. When it’s not, things can get hairy. The slider wasn’t the issue yesterday. His fastball is what got him in trouble.

Tony Wolters wants the fastball away from Yasmani Grandal’s bat with the bases loaded. The fastball didn’t go away. It went in, and bored a hole to the backstop. Ottavino’s release point is all out of whack, so he’s throwing across his body far more than usual. By the time he releases the ball, it’s got nowhere left to go. Justin Turner jogs home, and it’s a one-run game.

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Having taken advantage of a recent Yankees slump, the Red Sox are tied for first in the American League East. Though one of the big conversations about the team was how it would respond to losing David Ortiz, the Sox so far have also gotten very little from David Price. They’ve gotten nothing from would-be shutdown relievers Carson Smith and Tyler Thornburg. On the pitching and health side, things have gone anything but smoothly, and yet the Red Sox are fifth-best in runs allowed per game. By overall pitching WAR, they’re fourth. Their rotation ranks fourth, and their bullpen ranks fifth. The Red Sox have had one of the more effective pitching staffs in major league baseball.

Of course, so much is about the personnel. The Sox have seen the very best of Chris Sale, and they’ve also seen the very best of Craig Kimbrel. It’s not easy to find a better starting pitcher, or a better option to close a game down. But we can talk at least a little about team strategy. It’s not something we talk about often, but pitching staffs can and do have tactics, and the Red Sox are aiming their fastballs higher than anyone.

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Last Monday, I wrote this:

If you went to bed on the eve of the season and woke up today, you’d think everything was in order in the American League Central.

At that time, the Cleveland Baseball Club had compiled a 2.5-game lead on the Minnesota Twins. Cleveland had won six in a row and seven of their last 10, while Minnesota had lost four straight, and lost seven of their past 10. The preseason narrative looked to be crystallizing. Unfortunately, Minnesota wasn’t much interested in that narrative. The Twins proceeded to run off five wins in six ballgames, including three on the road in Cleveland, to take back control of the division.

Down south, the Brewers salvaged their week with a 7-0 win in their series finale with the Atlanta Baseball Club. Zach Davies pitched a very odd game, in which he tossed seven shutout innings, allowing just five baserunners (four hits and a walk) and didn’t strike anyone out. It was just the fifth time such a game had been pitched in the 2000s, the sixth time in the Wild Card Era, and the 129th time in baseball history.

The Brewers have been pretty disruptive to the main narrative, as well. When the Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series, Dave wrote a piece entitled “This Is How Dynasties Begin.” I nodded along, as it seemed, on that night, that the Cubs would be a force with which to reckon for some time to come. Today, I still believe that, but there have been cracks in the facade, certainly. Since May 17, the Brewers have been in sole possession of first place for every day save four — they spent two days 0.5 games back and two days tied for first place. They’ve had a tenuous grasp on the lead, as they haven’t pulled more than 2.5 games ahead, but they’ve been in first place nonetheless.

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Over the weekend, the Rockies came to LA to show everyone that the NL West was really going to be a fight, that this wasn’t just the Dodgers’ division to run away with. At 47-28, the Rockies were just behind the 48-26 Dodgers, and with a successful weekend in LA, they could even retake the division lead.

It didn’t go well. They Dodgers won 6-1 on Friday, 4-0 on Saturday, and 12-6 on Sunday, outscoring the Rockies 22-7 on the weekend. The Rockies are now 4.5 games back in the NL West race. Their chances of winning the division, which we had at 9.0% on June 20th, are now 1.3% on June 26th. And it’s not like the Rockies have fallen apart; the Dodgers are just proving to be an absolute behemoth.

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We live in an era of home runs. You know that. It’s been discussed ad nauseam on your favorite team’s broadcast, on your Twitter feed, and by your favorite baseball writers. We’re going to talk about it some more now.

The cause for this spike is manifold. Players are swinging up and for the fences, as you may have heard. They’re better-conditioned and better-fed. We understand the science and kinetics of hitting better than ever. The ball is quite possibly juiced. It’s a perfect storm of dingeritis that’s led to a fascinating new world where it’s not just guys like Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt who are in scoring position the very second they step into the box. Well over 100 batters have hit at least 10 home runs, and we’re not out of June yet. The list grows to more than 240 batters if you include those who have hit at least 5, which means they’ve got a fair shot of getting to double digits before the season is out.

So yeah, we’re going coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs here. Which leads to an interesting question: if this continues, if the ball really is juiced and if players are going to keep chasing fly balls when they’re in the box, if anyone can hit the ball out, doesn’t that make a home run less special? Doesn’t that make a home run less valuable? Doesn’t it alter projections for amateurs and prospects?

There’s two important lines of thought there, so we’ll tackle the inside-baseball stuff first. If you’re running a baseball team, you’re probably no longer getting worked up over a free agent with 20-homer power because of his power alone. Why dish out a two- or three-year deal for a veteran when there are kids in your minor-league system who can replicate that kind of power on the cheap? Power was one of the last remaining calling cards of free agents. Defense and speed can decrease with time, but veterans could get paid for their bats. Rookies and journeymen like Yonder Alonso are suddenly tapping into previously unrecognized reservoirs of power with wild success. Not everyone has a Cody Bellinger sitting around at Triple-A, but given the way the ball is flying around and the way hitters are structuring their swings, you may be able to scrounge up 15 bombs for a league-minimum salary.

We already saw some of this over the winter when players like Chris Carter had a hard time finding work. Power is coming even easier now. It’s becoming less of a defining tool. If everyone can hit 15-20 bombs, it then becomes a question of what else a player can do for you, and for how much. Can you field well? Can you play multiple positions? Do you walk a lot? Can you do all that for cheap?

There’s more to this than team-building and the squeezing out of veterans, too. There’s a fan’s side to this too, and it’s probably more important. We’re now witnessing home runs more often than ever. Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa aren’t running around out there anymore. The word “anabolic” isn’t in the papers all that often anymore. This is more dramatic than the steroid era. Maybe we’ll one day call this the “uppercut era,” the “juiced-ball era,” or the “three-true-outcomes era.” But this is clearly a different animal. Balls that have never really gone out before are going out. Is there a saturation point?

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