We’ve long known Trevor Bauer as the 21-year-old kid with attitude who shook off Miguel Montero as a rookie. The No. 3 overall pick from 2011 who Terry Francona called stubborn and implored to work more with the coaching staff.

Brian Dozier recently described Bauer to Eno Sarris as someone who “lives up in the zone” and who won’t go away from his strengths to attack Dozier, a high-ball hitter. And while it’s technically still true that Bauer often throws his fastballs high in the zone, it’s an interesting reminder of the perception of what Bauer was in the past, and the reality of what Bauer is now. The perception of Bauer was that he was so transfixed with his own pitching style, he was resistant to change. The reality is now, he couldn’t look more different.

Bauer opened the year in the bullpen after a rough 2015, but found himself back in the rotation after Cody Anderson’s early season struggles. In 11 starts, he’s got a 2.96 ERA and a 3.22 FIP. Over the last 30 days, he leads the entire majors in WAR among pitchers. But results are results, and without a change in process, there’d be no reason to believe the results should be any different. This is what a complete change in process looks like:
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Baseball never lacks for intriguing story lines. There is always a player breaking out and there is always a player declining. There are Cinderella teams and disappointing collapses. In this sport, you can always find something new and exciting to watch. But this post isn’t about those expectation defying feats. On the contrary, this post is about the predictable and reliable greatness of a guy named Miguel Cabrera and the absurdity dwelling beneath it.

Prior to the start of the season, our Depth Chart projections spit out a 2016 projected slash line of .310/.393/.524 for Cabrera, which amounted to a .387 wOBA. After a disappointing 0-for-5 game yesterday, Cabrera currently sits at .301/.379/.538 with a .383 wOBA. It’s not a perfect match for his projected line, but it’s damn close. His overall production is down from when he was a Triple Crown and MVP winner, but that’s to be expected for a 33-year-old. He’s still a stellar hitter putting up impressive numbers that are well in-line with what we expect to see from the future Hall of Famer. But underneath his cumulative numbers are a couple of jarring splits.

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I was reading through Jon Heyman’s latest Inside Baseball, and then I got to the White Sox section. Within, Heyman said something about Chris Sale, and though it wasn’t specifically about everything that’s going to follow in here, it at least works well enough for me to embed:

Chris Sale’s pitches come from such an unusual angle, it seems to fool umpires. It looked like he had an 0-and-5 count on Nick Castellanos in one at-bat (the actual count was 3-and-2)

Nothing important, really. Just a fleeting thought about one at-bat in particular. OK! Well, as you know, balls and strikes have to do with multiple factors. The pitcher plays a part. The hitter plays a part. The umpire plays a part. Dumb luck plays a part. And the catcher plays a part. In some previous posts, I’ve quickly touched on the White Sox’s catchers. It seems time for something in greater depth, because this has been an awfully big problem for a team that’s badly slipped.

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Ben and Sam discuss their fatalistic feelings concerning Noah Syndergaard, banter about fun facts and Fernando Abad, and talk about impending trade-deadline decisions for the White Sox, Yankees, and Pirates.

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It’s easy to consider over- and underachieving players in isolation. It’s only a little bit harder to put them in context. Below is some context. I exported a spreadsheet of every qualified position player on the season. Then I exported a spreadsheet of all our preseason projections, and I compared the two, looking at actual vs. projected WAR over however many trips to the plate each given player has had. Which players have underachieved expectations the most? Here are 10 names:

Prince Fielder is off his expected pace by about two and a half wins, which is absurd and terrible. Not that the Rangers have even really needed his help. But Fielder isn’t the only struggling star player, and right there in second is Andrew McCutchen, whom the Pirates could dearly use. He’s about tied with Giancarlo Stanton, who’s got his own problems, but let’s focus on one player at a time. McCutchen, by now, was supposed to be almost a three-win player. He hasn’t been close to a one-win player, and as he’s sunk, so has the team around him.

The Pirates have a whole lot of issues, sure. And the outfield as a whole has still been productive. Lower-budget teams, however, need their star players to be star players, and McCutchen hasn’t been a star player. It’s because he doesn’t have his swing.

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Ben and Sam talk to Professor Alan Nathan about the physics of knuckleballs, then talk to WFAA’s Brett Shipp about his reporting on public funding for the Rangers’ new ballpark.

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When the Nationals decided to begin the year with Danny Espinosa as their starting shortstop, with top prospect Trea Turner beginning the year back in Triple-A, it was widely seen as another example of a team manipulating the service time rules in order to extend their controllable years over a valuable player. That narrative was seemingly reinforced when the Nationals stuck with Espinosa even after he hit .185/.316/.246 in April, especially given that Turner was hitting .317/.387/.463 in Triple-A at the end of the first month of the season. And as the two disparate batting lines were compared and contrasted, calls for Turner to replace Espinosa got louder and louder.

Trea Turner's at .357/.430/.529 in AAA. Danny Espinosa is hitting .182/.324/.200 and his OBP is inflated by batting in front of the pitcher.

— keithlaw (@keithlaw) April 28, 2016

Yet the Nationals stuck with Espinosa. They pointed to his superior defense as a primary reason, also noting that Turner has some work to do with the glove, and stuck with that plan even after Turner came up and went 3 for 3 with a double and a walk after he got summoned to the big leagues while Ryan Zimmerman went on paternity leave. And now, as we reach the end of June, it’s probably time to admit the Nationals made the right call.

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Tampa Bay’s Blake Snell entered the season as one of Major League Baseball’s top prospects. Among the top-20 names on a number of the industry’s preseason lists and a dark-horse Rookie of the Year Candidate, there were rumors that the young left-hander might agree to a contract extension with the Rays that likely would have placed him on the club’s Opening Day roster. That didn’t happen, however. Finally, after sufficient time had passed to secure an extra year of service time for the Rays, Snell was called up to make a start and pitched well. Following that, however, a series of off days allowed Tampa Bay to deploy a four-man rotation. That, combined with a series of solid starts from Matt Andriese, meant Snell stayed down in the minors. Now he’s back and the results so far are mixed — but also easily corrected.

When a pitcher has compiled just three starts in the majors, and the first one of those is separated by more than a month from the other two, evaluating his statistics is a glass-half-full-half-empty situation. If you want to believe Blake Snell is doing well, look at his ERA and FIP — they’re 2.40 and 2.92, respectively — and how he has yet to concede a home run. For those who’d like to view the glass as half empty, consider instead that Snell has allowed five unearned runs for which his ERA (by definition) doesn’t account — and that, in his last two starts, he’s recorded as many walks as strikeouts. While giving up no home runs is good, it likely can’t continue like that and could lead to higher run totals in the future.

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