A few months back, Jeff Sullivan asked me what type of baseball dork I am. A big one, is probably the answer, but Jeff was inquiring on a more specific level. He asked: hitting or pitching? I answered: defense. It’s what I was best at when I played the game. It’s what my favorite players did best growing up. It’s the area of the game, analytically speaking, which most interests me. I derive more pleasure doing deep dives on defense in cases of dissenting opinion — talking about guys like Eric Hosmer, Jose Iglesias, or Jay Bruce — probably moreso than any other type of post I write. This won’t be a super deep dive. This is more of an observation, some video, and maybe a few chuckles. With Bartolo Colon, there’s always some chuckles. We’re all Bartolo Colon dorks.

Because I’m a defense dork, I hand out my own Gold Glove Awards at the end of each year, which really are just the numbers’ Gold Glove Awards, because all the different defensive metrics in one is all I use for those posts. And so, because I do that at the end of each season for the posts, I often find myself doing it at the midway point of each season, as well, just to see. I bring this up because I just did it, and that’s why this post exists. Because here’s how the pitchers currently grade out:

Total Defensive Runs, Pitchers

1. Bartolo Colon, +3.8 runs saved
2. Zack Greinke, +3.6
3. Dallas Keuchel, +3.2
4. Tyler Chatwood, +3.0
5. Justin Verlander, +2.9

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Every year we go through the same routine. A previously unimpressive player has a couple great months and we wonder if we’re observing something new and meaningful or if it’s simply random variation and the regression monster is coming. I haven’t done a thorough analysis, but I’d imagine a larger percentage of articles written on sites like this during the first months contain the sentiment “This sure looks new and interesting, but it’s just too early to tell.”

Frequently, we don’t follow up on these analyses. There’s simply too much going on throughout the game and there usually isn’t much to add to the original article other than thumbs up or down. Last year, one such article that actually merited a follow-up was this one concerning Zack Cozart’s best 40 games. After three seasons of well below-average offense, the slick-fielding shortstop was crushing the ball into late May. I pointed out that Cozart seemed to have developed a new approach that generated harder contact and more pulled fly balls, which was supported by some comments by Cozart himself regarding a conversation he’d had with Barry Larkin during Spring Training.

Three weeks after the article appeared on the site, Zack Cozart suffered a nasty right-knee injury and was sidelined for the remainder of the season. That meant I would have to wait more than a full calendar year to approach a sufficiently large sample to determine if Cozart had really improved or if we were looking at some well-timed good fortune. Thirteen months after Cozart’s knee gave out, we have our answer: Zack Cozart can hit.

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Not too long ago, I wrote about how the Blue Jays have gotten back to hitting the snot out of the ball. That shouldn’t be too surprising — a year ago, the Blue Jays hit the snot out of the ball. There was something in there, though, I’ve had trouble shaking. I included it as just a throwaway remark, but with Jose Bautista sidelined for the past few weeks, Ezequiel Carrera has gotten regular playing time. And even Ezequiel Carrera has hit.

Odds are, you don’t care. At least, you don’t care much. Several of you might not have ever heard of Carrera before. He’s 29 and he’s made the rounds, and, well, low-profile players can get on good runs. Numbers like Carrera’s could be easy to ignore, but I’ve known of Carrera for years, and I dug in. Carrera has started to show something. Somethings, more like. He’s got a good batting line for the first time in his career. The Blue Jays, as an organization, seem to know something about hitting, and I’m wondering now if even Carrera is reaping the benefits.

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Ben and Sam banter about box scores and the All-Star Game, then answer listener emails about alien abductions, odd career arcs, Clayton Kershaw, and being above or below .500.

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This is stupid. I mean, honestly, I think it’s kind of smart, but the subject is stupid. This is arguing semantics on account of a single pitch thrown in an exhibition baseball game that, no matter what they say, doesn’t really matter. Just — I want you to understand, up front, there isn’t a real good point for this. This post needn’t exist, but I’m a pitching dork, and a pitch in Tuesday’s All-Star Game captured the attention of my dorkiness. It was the most talked-about pitch of the contest. This is how Jose Fernandez started David Ortiz in the third inning:

The thing to notice is that “80” down there. Sometimes, Jose Fernandez throws 80 mile-per-hour breaking balls. This wasn’t one of them. Ortiz said Fernandez threw a changeup. Fernandez smiled and said he threw a fastball. Obviously, it wasn’t a normal fastball. The normal fastball buzzes 96. So, did Fernandez actually throw a changeup, or a slow fastball? I believe the evidence points to the latter. I warned you this would be stupid.

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Now that we’ve seen the triple-digit velocities of the Major League All-Star Game, let’s take a look at two prospects who sit in the low 90s with their fastballs! If that’s not exciting enough, neither one has what you might consider a plus secondary pitch! They’re not at the top of any prospect lists! Wait. Why are we going to talk about Phil Bickford and Joe Musgrove, anyway?

Because they have plus command. Command isn’t a thing on which you can easily put a number. Not only are minor-league strike zones more, uh, diverse than major-league ones, but so is the level of competition. A pitcher with a blazing fastball can fill up the zone with poor command and produce low walk rates. Think of Jose Berrios, who recently came up to the big leagues after putting up great walk rates in the minors — and this despite reservations on his organization’s behalf about his command. The command didn’t look sharp when he got to face big leaguers.

Plus command is a funny thing, though. When it’s not paired with elite stuff, it can be denigrated. Some don’t think much of misters Bickford and Musgrove. But, since Eric Longenhagen got a good look at those two at the Futures Game, and I had a chance to talk with each, let’s combine our views to take a clear look at these two and see what particular struggles they have, and what they have to say about fastball command. Turns out, they each have some unusual movement on their fastballs, and ideas on how to improve the rest of their repertoires.

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I’m of the belief that, if you look close enough, you can find at least one moment of beauty in every baseball game. But, as someone with a ton of firsthand experience watching Phillies games over the past five seasons, I can confirm that sometimes you have to look really hard to find that beauty. In reflecting on the first half of the season, I wanted to identify games in which baseball’s innate beauty and excitement had shown through most brightly. Using Win Probability Added (WPA) as an objective, if imperfect, means of identifying the amount of drama in a game, I isolated two contests which make a strong case for the title of Most Exciting Game of the First Half.

My methodology was simple. First, I looked at team WPA accrued by a team’s pitching staff in a game. I added the pitching WPA for both teams and found the game with the highest combined WPA. Next, I repeated the process with WPA recorded by both teams’ offenses. The result is the game in which pitchers did the most to impact their teams’ win expectancy and the game in which position players did the most to impact their teams’ win expectancy. Let’s take a look at both of them and see if either game stands out as the most exciting game in 2016.

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As has become customary, both Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and Tony Clark, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, held press conferences during All-Star week to field questions regarding various issues affecting the game. Unsurprisingly, one of the issues about which both men were asked concerned the ongoing litigation over the allegedly illegally low wages paid to minor-league players.

For his part, Manfred insisted that the minor-league wage debate “is not a dollars and cents issue” for the league. Instead, he asserted that the league was merely concerned with the feasibility of applying these laws to professional athletes:

“I want to take extra BP — am I working, or am I not working? Travel time. You know, is every moment that you’re on the bus, is that your commute that you don’t get paid for? Or is that working time? Where’s the clock, who’s going to punch a clock keep track of those hours?”

“Who’s going to keep track of those hours? When you’re eating in a clubhouse with a spread that the employer provides, is that working time, or is that your lunch break? We can figure out the economics. The administrative burden associated with the application of these laws to professional athletes that were never intended to apply for professional athletes is the real issue.”

Meanwhile, Clark contended that his hands are tied on the matter, since the MLBPA does not currently represent most minor-league players, and thus “legally [doesn’t] have the ability to negotiate on their behalf.”

To some extent, both Manfred and Clark expressed fair and legitimate concerns regarding the issue. At the same time, however, further examination reveals that both statements appear to be somewhat disingenuous.

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