There are a couple good stories beginning to emerge in the American League. Just last night, the Mariners crawled their way all the way back to .500, despite suffering through a rash of significant early-season injuries. And, similarly, although the Blue Jays aren’t quite also at .500, they’re close, despite encountering a similar problem. There’s been talk of whether the Mariners and Blue Jays ought to sell. With their play much improved, each team is firmly back in the race, vying to contend for the wild card.

With any team in such a position, success is dependent upon there being some surprises. And when you look at the Jays, there may be no bigger surprise than the offensive performance of Justin Smoak. Before the year, there were 14 Jays projected to play at least semi-regularly, and Smoak stood as the eighth-best hitter. At this writing, there have been 14 Jays who have played at least semi-regularly, and Smoak has been the second-best hitter. By wRC+, he’s above Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Daniel Murphy, and Kris Bryant. Smoak has a career WAR of 1.8. This season alone, he’s been worth 1.5.

As you know, Smoak is a former top prospect. Plenty of hype, for plenty of years. He’s also 30 years old, and until now, he looked like a replacement-level hitter. When the Jays signed him to a modest extension a year ago, it was met with mockery and disappointment. Welp. There was no putting off this post any longer.

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As usual, Mike Trout is at the top of our WAR leaderboard. That will only be true for a little while longer, however, as Trout’s lead is down to just one tenth of one win, and he’s unfortunately on the shelf for the next couple of months. Based on the current trajectory, at some point in the next week or so, Zack Cozart will usurp Trout at the top of that list. For all the great performances we’ve seen in the first half of 2017, it’s the Reds 31 year old shortstop who is currently stealing the show.

While the Reds are currently fringe Wild Card contenders, sitting at 28-30, the reality remains that they are very likely to be sellers instead of buyers over the next two months. The team is clearly prioritizing the future over the present, and with a league-worst pitching staff, it is unlikely that the Reds will manage to stay close enough to the win-now teams in the NL to incentivize the front office to dramatically shift course in an effort to take advantage of a stronger-than-expected first half. And as a team looking towards the future, the most obvious trade chips are impending free agents, which is a class Cozart also falls into. When you’re a rebuilding team with a player headed towards free agency who is nearly leading everyone in WAR, a trade seems inevitable.

So as the Reds and the rest of baseball head towards the July 31st trade deadline, perhaps no question will loom larger than this one: how good is Zack Cozart now?

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Jeremy Barfield pitched on the final day of May. He did so effectively, but only out of necessity. The 28-year-old outfielder’s current club, the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs, had run out of available pitchers in the second game of a doubleheader. Moving from right field to the mound for innings 11, 12, and 13, Barfield allowed just two hits — one of them a home run — and logged three strikeouts.

It wasn’t his first time toeing the rubber. In 2014 — his seventh professional season — Barfield made 25 mostly reluctant relief appearances in the Oakland organization. The following year, he threw two innings for Colorado’s Triple-A affiliate.

Barfield doesn’t like pitching. What he likes is hitting, which he’s done with mixed results since the A’s took him in the eighth round of the 2008 draft out of San Jacinto Junior College. But while questions about his bat led to a temporary position switch a few years ago, the son of former All-Star outfielder Jesse Barfield is now on the upswing. Last year he logged a .916 OPS and swatted 27 home runs with the Sugarland Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League. Since signing a minor-league deal with the Red Sox few weeks ago, he’s slashed .318/.333/.636 and gone yard four times in 45 Double-A plate appearances.

Barfield talked about his journey, which includes a tenuous relationship with pitching, prior to a recent game.

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Barfield on his self-identity and his temporary conversion: “I hit, man. That’s what I do. The A’s experimented with me on the mound, but that wasn’t my choice. The situation I was in… there was just no opportunity for me to get regular at-bats in Triple-A. I got buried on the depth chart and basically got forced into pitching. I didn’t want to do it. I still don’t want to. It’s something I’m capable of doing, but it’s not what I’m meant to do.

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We’ve talked (a lot, maybe) about lifting the ball more here, and so far the discussion has revolved around hands, legs, and intent — the mechanics of the swing, more or less. There’s another way to lift the ball better, though, one that hasn’t been addressed here: swinging at better pitches. That’s what Kevin Pillar has focused on, and his story offers another look into the effort to hit the ball over the shift.

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The Minnesota Twins remain among the season’s early surprises, as they still reside in first place in an AL Central Division that includes a heavy division favorite and reigning AL champion in the Cleveland Indians.

There are a number of reasons the Twins are where they are atop the division. They have improved offensively from a 95 wRC+ club a year ago, to a 101 mark this season. Miguel Sano is the loudest reason for that — literally, as a loquacious presence in the clubhouse and also as owner of the most violent contact in the league. A more selective Sano is mashing, and the public seems to recognize this: the 24-year-old leads All-Star balloting at third base. In a world with a lame Mike Trout, Sano is in the MVP discussion, as well. Max Kepler and Robbie Grossman are raking, and while Joe Mauer remains a shell of what he was, he has posted a .359 on-base mark.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Boston at New York NL | 19:05 ET
Price (12.0 IP, 99 xFIP-) vs. Pineda (64.2 IP, 79 xFIP-)
The Yankees have recorded the top BaseRuns record in the majors not, as has frequently been the case in the past, on the strength of aging relics but rather on promising young players.

Regard, the club’s top-five players by WAR this year, featuring four players aged 27 or younger:

This evening, the team’s strong corps of position players — which currently ranks fourth in the majors by WAR — is complemented by Michael Pineda. Still a couple years shy of 30 himself, Pineda continues to control the strike zone like few other pitchers in the league.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Boston Radio.

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The 2017 MLB draft is going to kick off early next week. What do I know about the MLB draft? Nothing! What can I tell you about which teams are good drafters? Very little! I don’t really know what might count as my specific field of expertise, but I know some fields that definitely *aren’t*, and the draft is one of them. You and I, we’re on the same level. Unless you read about the draft a lot, in which case, you’re the smarter one here.

I can’t tell you the first thing about how the draft is going to go. I don’t know which picks might seem risky, and which picks might seem safe. The best I can do for draft-related content is analyze results. Why don’t we take a few minutes to review those? Who has drafted well? Who hasn’t? There, we can have some ideas, if we allow the numbers to be the guide.

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