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The results just were not there under Jack Zduriencik’s watch.

Plain. Simple. Telling.

It was not for a lack of preparation and effort on his part. With Zduriencik as the general manager, the Seattle Mariners attempted to sign big-time free agents, develop stars from within and trade for what they didn’t have, but nothing done by the man nicknamed “Jack Z” produced nearly enough wins in any of the seven seasons during which he was in charge of the roster.

Because of that, the Mariners unsurprisingly fired Zduriencik on Friday as the team, not an abnormal World Series pick entering the spring, started the day 10 games under .500 and seven games out of the lead in the American League West, gingerly flirting with last place. They never finished higher than third and never made the playoffs under Zduriencik.

He did not leave the cupboard bare, though, which is part of the reason the team was a disappointment. The Mariners won 87 games a year ago and appeared to be a better club in 2015, but the rotation has not lived up to expectations and neither have Robinson Cano, Kyle Seager, Austin Jackson and Mike Zunino, who was demoted to Triple-A Tacoma shortly after Zduriencik was canned.

The fact that the Mariners, with a core of promising young pitchers, an ace already in place with Felix Hernandez, some potentially productive hitters and a legitimate power hitter in Nelson Cruz, had those expectations in the first place means Seattle’s new front office vacancy should be a desirable one.

ESPN analyst Tim Kurkjian said on Dan Le Batard’s radio show that many people are going to want the job:

There’s going to be a long list of general managers that want that job, Frank Wren, Jerry Dipoto. All sorts of guys are going to be lining up for that job because that team has good young pitching. It’s got a really good base of players. They should have been way better than this, and they weren’t. I like where the Mariners are going long term. I can’t believe they played this poorly this year, but the pieces are in place for them to be good someday and for quite a while. They’re not going to have any trouble finding a GM.

That is because Zduriencik, who was a significant part of a front office that returned the Milwaukee Brewers to the postseason in 2008, brought in stars (Cano and Cruz) and retained the one he inherited (Hernandez). His regime drafted the likes of Seager, Zunino, Taijuan Walker and James Paxton while signing gems like Hisashi Iwakuma. Zduriencik did a good job of putting together a major league roster mixed with veterans, players in their primes and those with massive upside. That is why the Mariners extended Zduriencik for multiple years almost exactly a year prior to his firing.

The team just did not win enough, and if the next GM does, he will likely be doing it with a group of players cobbled together by his predecessor.

Kevin Mather says the nucleus is there for the #Mariners to win now, and would lean towards an experienced GM.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) August 28, 2015

Zduriencik told reporters (h/t the Seattle Times) his time as GM didn’t work out the way he hoped it would:

You have to be realistic about everything. You have to look at things the way they are. When things don’t work out and the performances aren’t what you hoped they would be, then things happen and there’s consequences that must be paid. When you take a job as a general manager, you take a job as a manager or you take a job as whatever, you’re accountable. At the end of the day, if it doesn’t work, there’s no excuses. You’re the guy as the general manager that is responsible for the club, no matter what. It just didn’t work out like we hoped it would.

Zduriencik did have his share of ugly misses in free agency—the sheer size and length of Cano’s contract falls under that category—and in the draft, which has left the farm system weak, though part of the reason is recently graduated prospects like Walker and Paxton. So there will be some work to do for the future GM, whom the organization wants in place before free agency, per Nightengale.

As to whom that might be, there is already a group of names being speculated. Wren and Dipoto are among them, as are Chicago White Sox executive vice president Kenny Williams, Philadelphia Phillies president Pat Gillick and recently resigned Boston Red Sox GM Ben Cherington.

With an established core and a payroll that is not completely outrageous at $121.7 million, an old-school GM could work as well as a new-age analytical one. What is known is the team wants experience in that chair, per MLB.com’s Greg Johns, and all of the mentioned names would fit.

Whoever might take the job will walk into a rebuild where much of the work has been laid. The only thing left to do, aside from some tweaking, is to win.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The San Diego Padres‘ dreams faded rather quickly this summer.

The offseason was an incredibly aggressive one for first-year general manager A.J. Preller, who brought in no fewer than seven new players to upgrade a team that had not finished higher than third place in the previous four seasons.

With those moves came gargantuan expectations within a division that already housed a club with three World Series titles in the past five years (the San Francisco Giants) and another with a record-breaking payroll (the Los Angeles Dodgers).

For a short time, the Padres lived up to the hype, winning 10 of their first 15 games. Then came a reality check in the form of seven losses in their next eight contests. They never realistically sniffed the top of the National League West again. 

With that kind of letdown comes consequences, including a fired manager (Bud Black) and the expectation to sell at the trade deadlines, both in July and August. But even though the Padres were virtually silent in July and most of the subsequent month, they still have a valuable trade chip in starter James Shields.

He has already cleared waivers, meaning he can be traded to any team until the August 31 deadline. And the Padres would probably like to get rid of his contract before it gets too heavy for their payroll.

Shields cleared waivers because his four-year, $75 million contract turns huge next season.

The Padres are paying him $10 million this year, of which less than $2 million is left, and his salary dramatically jumps to $21 million in each of the next three campaigns with a $16 million team option for a fifth or a $2 million buyout in 2019. Shields can opt out after next season, but given the way the entirety of this year has gone, he’s unlikely to do so.

Understandably, no team was going to take a chance at claiming the 33-year-old right-hander and risk being stuck with him and that contract.

Despite the money, Shields has a certain appeal to teams pushing for playoff spots with dreams of World Series appearances floating in their heads.

Since July 1, Shields has taken the ball 10 times and produced a 2.95 ERA in 61 innings. Despite that, the Padres are 3-7 in those starts and currently sit 6.5 games out of first place in their division and 11.5 out of the second wild-card spot with four teams ahead of them.

All of this gives the Padres incentive to move the postseason-tested Shields, and it gives a contender something to think about heading into the final days of the August trade deadline.

The Padres are under no mandate to cut their franchise-record $108 million payroll, nor to trade Shields, but one option could be a swapping of hugely disappointing contracts. For example, the Padres could pursue a trade for Pablo Sandoval, whom they sought in free agency last offseason, from the Boston Red Sox along with another player or cash in exchange for Shields, a trade suggested by the Boston Globe‘s Nick Cafardo.

The Padres are unlikely to eat too much of Shields’ deal, so this kind of option might be their best bet to put him on his fourth team in four seasons.

“It makes too much sense, so it won’t happen,” a scout told Cafardo of the possibility earlier this month.

Some of the reasons Shields did not sign with the Padres until February undoubtedly included that he was at an advanced age and the mileage on his arm was already great, which kept teams away. Leading into this season, he had thrown over 200 innings in eight of the past nine years, and the only one in which he failed to do so was his rookie season, when he made only 21 starts for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Decline seemed inevitable, and no club wanted to flirt with the disastrous possibility that Shields would completely fall off a cliff without warning. And over his first 16 starts that certainly seemed to be the case as he compiled a 4.24 ERA and allowed 16 home runs despite making his new home in cavernous Petco Park, a stadium that in 2014 allowed among the fewest long balls in the majors.

However, he’s at 158.2 innings pitched with a 3.74 ERA—right in line with his career averages. He’s also at 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings (though his walk rate is dramatically up from 1.7 last year to 3.2), his highest mark yet.

A day before last month’s non-waiver deadline, Jeff Sanders of the San Diego Union-Tribune detailed Shields’ decline, ending his piece with this: “None of this is to say that Shields can’t be a productive pitcher moving forward. He clearly can, but the Padres might be out of luck if they were hoping to get someone else to pay him to be a $21 million pitcher over the next three years.”

That may still be true, and the Padres, if they want to move him, might have to eat some of that money. But things have changed since that examination of Shields’ fall. He’s gotten much better over the last two months.

And in a time of need, that might be enough for some contender to take the bait.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It is time to take these guys quite seriously.

Most of the numbers say we probably shouldn’t. Their run differential says they should be well under .500. Their offense is not entirely intimidating and could be seen as a liability. Their overall pitching is about the worst in Major League Baseball, and their rotation has not been much better.

Based on all of that, this is a club that should be falling back for a top draft position: not holding onto a playoff position.

That is exactly what the Texas Rangers are doing, though. With less than 40 games to play, they are in sole possession of the second wild-card spot, having won nine of their last 11 games while stunning the baseball world a season after losing 95 games and their ace in spring training. 

For the Rangers, this is no longer about what they can do next year. This is about becoming legitimate World Series contenders in a season that they were once eight games under .500.

“We definitely believe in that,” designated hitter Prince Fielder told Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News on Saturday. “We’re trying to stay focused and not let it get away from us.”

When the Rangers pulled off the blockbuster trade deadline deal for Cole Hamels last month, they finished that day 50-52 and three games out of the second wild-card spot, with four teams ahead of them. For those reasons, the trade for Hamels was seen as an aggressive move to become contenders in 2016 when they could pair him with Yu Darvish, their incumbent ace who had Tommy John surgery in March.

Since firing a no-hitter in his last start with the Philadelphia Phillies, Hamels had not been much of an ace for the Rangers in his first three starts—12 earned runs in 20.2 innings for a 5.23 ERA to go with a 1.45 WHIP. He was solid on Sunday, giving the Rangers six innings of two-run ball to get his first win with the team.

While Hamels has yet to look great with Texas aside from giving them plenty of innings, he is still one of the game’s aces. Because of that, he gives the Rangers a serious chance to win a one-game wild-card matchup against anybody the team might face.

His trade might have been viewed publicly as a move for next season, but given the team’s surge, he is now very much part of the team’s hope to reach the postseason and advance.

The Rangers staff has been brutally ineffective for most of the season. Entering Sunday, their 6.2 Fangraphs WAR is 13^th in the American League, as was their 4.39 ERA. The rotation’s 6.0 WAR is also 14^th, its ERA (4.34) is 13^th and its Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) (4.45) is dead last. It also strikes out just 6.01 hitters per nine innings, the second-lowest mark in the league.

Obviously, Hamels taking the ball in a must-win kind of game is a huge boost.

“No matter what kind of condition I have or what I’m going through, I have to be able to go out there and put up zeros on the board,” Hamels told reporters last week. “The expectations that I have are to be able to burn innings, make quality pitches and work quick enough so the defense is able to stay in the game and make great plays.” 

The offense, which has picked up a tick during this hot stretch, also has been disappointing. Its overall Fangraphs offensive mark was minus-21.2 through Saturday, and it ranked 13^th in the league in Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) while being about middle-of-the-pack in several other categories like OBP, OPS and Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA).

Shin-Soo Choo, who has been a disappointment since signing with the Rangers before last season, has been one of their hotter hitters lately with a 147 wRC+ over his previous 13 games going into Sunday. And with Fielder having a strong season, even with his power numbers a bit down, along with Mitch Moreland and Rougned Odor being well above league average offensively, they give the Rangers a lineup capable of supporting a playoff push down the stretch. 

Also, power-hitting prospect Joey Gallo could be called up and be eligible for the postseason roster, giving the team another power threat in the final month, and possibly in the playoffs.

These Rangers might not look like a playoff team, or even a legitimate threat to contend, on the data sheets. They don’t pitch well, they are just an OK hitting team in a hitter-friendly yard and their newly acquired No. 1 starter has yet to be dominant for them.

But they are winning, and doing it often enough that a postseason berth could be only about a month away if they don’t slump. The Rangers’ current position might be surprising, but if they end up in the playoffs, making some noise should not surprise anyone considering the pieces they possess.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired first-hand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Talk about drumming up drama where there is none. 

In what might have easily erupted into a full-blown baseball scandal, a shiny substance that may have been anything from sunscreen to sweat was pictured on Houston Astros right-hander Mike Fiers’ glove during his historic performance against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night. 

Fiers’ no-hitter was the 11th in Astros franchise history and the first since 1973 to be thrown by a guy who had been traded in the same season. It was also the first complete game of his career and easily his greatest performance in the major leagues.

But as it’s known to do from time to time, Twitter turned a great event into a potential disgrace when people started tweeting screenshots of the inside of Fiers’ glove, which had some sort of shiny substance on the upper thumb. Cries of cheating followed, attempting to drown Fiers’ shining moment as a professional.

Did Fiers pitch a no hitter with pine tar on his glove ? pic.twitter.com/liVUGBZpuu

— Baseball Serious (@BaseballSerious) August 22, 2015

“Last night was about Mike Fiers being a really good major league pitcher, and he had a great accomplishment,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch told reporters Saturday. “Anything that takes away from that is unfortunate, unless there’s this massive proof.”

There was not. The proof was weak at best, and all the pictures did was mildly take away from Fiers’ 134-pitch performance that featured a devastating curveball, aided by a foreign substance or not:

.@Fiers64 rode his devastating hook to no-hit glory. #DomiNoNO pic.twitter.com/dxbTueHhyT

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) August 22, 2015

Because of the pictures, Fiers was faced with questions about what exactly was on his glove. He rightfully brushed off the inquiries, ones he shouldn’t have to answer, though the reporters confronting him were forced into the situation by the shots on the Internet.

“I mean, you can try to pick out a lot of things through a lot of games,” Fiers told reporters Saturday. “I don’t know what they are talking about. It could be a different lighting or camera angle or a lot of things. I don’t know.”

Neither did anyone watching at home, which made the tweets reek of hate. They were attempts to knock down a guy who had just reached a personal pedestal.

Thankfully, the Dodgers did not take part in that. Approached with the topic on Saturday, the Dodgers players did not say they believed Fiers cheated. They claimed making that implication would take away from Fiers’ performance. And they were right. The proof did not exist to do so, and it certainly would have cast darkness on the most outstanding night of Fiers’ career.

“I don’t want to take anything away from his night,” Dodgers left fielder Carl Crawford told reporters.

Crawford did add that pitchers using substances on the ball was commonplace in the major league. According to him, it is basically one of the game’s accepted illegal practices.

“I know when I was back in Tampa, I used to see pitchers putting stuff on balls all the time,” Crawford told reporters. “I don’t know how many guys around the league are doing it, but on my team, I used to see them doing stuff all the time, so I just figured it was normal. I’d just be like, ‘Yo, I’m going to tell on you if I ever got to face you,’ just joking around, but I just figure it’s not that big of a deal.

“I don’t know if it’s an advantage. You still have to throw the ball over the plate, but at the same time, there’s a reason why they do it and they know they’re going to get in trouble for it and they still do it.”

Even if the opposing team suspects a pitcher might be using a substance for grip purposes or any other reason, they are unlikely to bring it to an umpire’s attention unless the pitcher scoffs at common sense and makes the violation obvious. Had Fiers put anything on his glove Friday, it would have qualified as blatantly obvious because it was in plain sight, much the same way New York Yankees starter Michael Pineda used a substance last year, drawing himself a 10-game suspension.

But the Dodgers never noticed anything strange on Fiers’ glove. Therefore there was no need to alert the game’s authorities.

“I think if you talk about stuff like that, it seems like you’re whining,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly told reporters Saturday. “I think a lot of guys use it. It’s kind of accepted unless it’s just blatantly obvious that somebody’s doing it. I had no idea during the game; nobody said anything to us.”

And nobody should say anything about it again. Friday night belonged to Fiers, and believing anything different unfairly clouds one of the most memorable nights of his life to date.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The days leading up to the revocable waiver trade deadline are nowhere near as busy or filled with rumors as the July non-waiver deadline, but this week there was plenty of activity to keep interest high.

From the San Diego Padres continuing to make weird decisions to the two front-runners in their division adding veteran pieces, trade talk had substance this week.

But there has been plenty more to digest. From the stunning shake-up of the Boston Red Sox front office to Major League Baseball and one of its rights holders finally making progress on streaming in-market games to Derek Jeter‘s ego taking a gut shot, there was lots to talk about.

Here are the takeaways from MLB‘s Week 20.

Begin Slideshow

The criticism has been shot with impunity, mostly because everyone with an Internet connection has done it, and the targets have been easy to hit.

Arizona Diamondbacks chief baseball officer Tony La Russa and general manager Dave Stewart have a reputation for resisting Major League Baseball’s move into an analytics era, per USA Today‘s Jason Lisk. They are not entirely different from the previous regime of Kevin Towers and Kirk Gibson, and their controversial payroll-slashing trade of the organization’s 2014 first-round pick in June, followed by curious and baffling comments by Stewart in defense of the deal, led to a war cry from critics, per ESPN’s David Schoenfield.

Rightfully so. This is a franchise that does not look like it can afford to jettison promising pitchers for cash, and it’s moves like that that can create distrust among a fanbase.

Then again, showing immediate promise and potential does much more to retain it. The Diamondbacks are quietly growing into one of the most promising teams in baseball, building to become a potentially legitimate National League contender in 2016 with a potent, youthful offense and a pitching core with upside.

“We kind of look around the clubhouse, and the players like the players that are in here,” center fielder A.J. Pollock told Dave Lumia of Fox Sports Arizona last week. “We feel like we’re very capable of turning heads. Some people are surprised, but we’re not.”

And maybe nobody should be. The Diamondbacks have a plus-29 run differential. Based on that, the team should be around six games over .500 by way of Bill James’ Pythagorean win-loss predictor. The reason the club sits two games under .500 is because its pitching staff gives up more than four runs a game on average. 

The offense has saved the team from being an embarrassment because of its pitching. It’s scoring more than 4.5 runs per game, the fourth-highest average in the majors behind three American League East teams going into Thursday.

In that same time frame, the Diamondbacks led the NL in runs (538), BABIP (.317), baserunning (12.7) and ranked in the league’s top five in OBP (.324), slugging (.405), OPS (.729), Weighted On-Base Average (.316) and Weighted Runs Created Plus (96).

They are also the youngest lineup in the majors with an average age of just under 27 years old—they started the year as the second youngest (28.04 years), according to Stats LLC (per ArizonaSports.com). At the start of last season, the team had the sixth-oldest lineup in baseball.

“Maybe it’s because everyone is so young and so hungry and still trying to make a name for themselves. But you should see how hard this team works behind the scenes, the time spent in the weight room and the (batting) cages,” Paul Goldschmidt, the team’s MVP candidate, told Dan Bickley of AZ Central.

“And we have to be one of the most prepared teams in the league when it comes to scouting reports. It all shows up on the field.”

With guys like Goldschmidt, Pollock, Welington Castillo, David Peralta and Yasmany Tomas as mainstays in the lineup, not to mention top overall pick in last June’s draft Dansby Swanson set to join that infield in the next few years at the latest, the offense seems set.

The team’s problem is its rotation, and everyone, including manager Chip Hale, understands that.

Robbie Ray, acquired from the Detroit Tigers in the three-team deal that sent shortstop Didi Gregorius to the New York Yankees over the offseason, has been the most promising arm in Arizona this season. He is 23 and has a 3.38 ERA and 3.29 Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) in 15 starts. He has also been far better on the road and away from hitter-friendly Chase Field, putting up a 2.75 ERA in nine starts, as opposed to a 4.45 ERA in six home starts.

Patrick Corbin looks like he can be a valuable starter since returning from Tommy John surgery last month. In his nine starts, the 26-year-old has a 4.09 ERA, 3.72 FIP and is striking out 9.2 hitters per nine innings.

Other than those two, the Diamondbacks have not gotten much in the way of optimism from their other starters, including Rubby De La Rosa, Jeremy Hellickson or Archie Bradley, though Bradley is only 23 years old and has fought shoulder issues this season.

Plus, Cuban signee Yoan Lopez is on the minor league disabled list with elbow stiffness/tightness, which can be a precursor to Tommy John surgery. Lopez cost the team more than $16 million to sign because of taxes, and he was the organization’s No. 5 prospect, according to MLB.com.

This is why it was so curious, and infuriating to some, that the front office would move last year’s top draft pick, Touki Toussaint, for money when he was rated the team’s No. 3 prospect by ESPN’s Keith Law. This doesn’t seem like an organization that can get rid of promising pitching prospects as if they grow through the rock lawns of the Arizona valley.

If La Russa and Stewart take the $10 million they got for Toussaint and deploy it in a deal for a front-line free-agent starter, then fine. Because for the Diamondbacks to become true contenders in the NL West, their rotation will have to greatly improve from being one of the league’s bottom dwellers, according to FanGraphs.

“If Dave Stewart can fix the pitching,” Joel Sherman of the New York Post said on MLB Network, “this team can be something.”

For now that “if” remains prominent, but so does the fact that the Diamondbacks have a great foundation of young position players poised to give opposing pitchers fits in 2016 as the team makes its way back to relevancy.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Marlon Byrd has value. 

It is tangible. It’s not like saying he brings leadership or veteran experience to a clubhouse. Those things can’t be measured. And who knows if they actually help? Especially when a team already possesses such qualities across its rows of lockers.

Byrd hits for power, and he currently has his health. For the San Francisco Giants, those things are entirely valuable right now. Going into the season’s final six or so weeks, Byrd’s bat plays for the defending World Series champions, a team injured in the outfield and in its lineup by the absences of Hunter Pence and Joe Panik.

“He still has some old-man strength,” Leake, a teammate of Byrd’s earlier this season with the Cincinnati Reds, told Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle. “I think he’ll help out.”

There’s no reason to doubt that. Byrd has 19 home runs this season, which is his biggest draw, since his OBP was .286, and his OPS-plus was 98 playing mostly in hitter-friendly Great American Ball Park. Sticking him in the outfield with Pence gone gives the Giant at least a power presence.

And while Byrd’s numbers at AT&T Park aren’t great—.216 average and .263 OBP—he has hit for power with four homers in 20 games. And maybe some icing on the cake is that he pounds Dodgers pitching at Dodger Stadium to the tune of .356/.387/.529 with six doubles and three homers in 93 plate appearances.

The Giants have been hit hard by injuries, as have several other contenders in the National League, and are now 2.5 games behind the Dodgers in the NL West and four behind the Chicago Cubs for the second wild-card spot. Byrd gives them coverage in the outfield with Pence and Nori Aoki both spending multiple stints on the disabled list this year. Plus, the Giants do not expect to have All-Star second baseman Panik back until next month. 

“I’m excited,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy told reporters, via the Associated Press (h/t ESPN). “Marlon is a real pro who knows how to play the game and, most importantly, gives us a much-needed bat.”

The move comes A day after their archrivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, made a similar move to bolster their ailing lineup with Chase Utley. And while the trade does not address the team’s biggest need, much like the Utley trade, Mike Leake’s return to the rotation in the coming days could do exactly that for the Giants.

And if Leake is right, his return could be more impactful than the deal for Byrd.

The Giants’ rotation has struggled in the second half outside of ace Madison Bumgarner and Leake’s one start before pulling a hamstring after his trade. Taking out the second-half innings of those two, San Francisco’s rotation has a 4.38 ERA since the All-Star break after Jake Peavy gave up four runs in six innings Thursday night in Pittsburgh.

Aside from Peavy, Matt Cain and Chris Heston have also been points of concern recently. In Cain’s four August starts, which included a solid six-inning, two-run performance in St. Louis on Wednesday, he has a 7.32 ERA and 7.02 FIP, costing the Giants about a half a win (h/t Matt Goldman of MLB Daily Dish). Heston has not been much better, showing a 4.58 ERA, 6.11 FIP and also costing the Giants in wins in his four turns.

Ryan Vogelsong has been good since returning to the rotation this month, posting a 2.40 ERA in three outings. But none of them have lasted longer than six innings, as he has not been at all efficient with his pitches. Considering the Giants have holes in other rotation spots, that lack of length could end up taxing what has been a pretty good bullpen in the second half.

“They aren’t overly confident in their starting rotation,” Fox Sports 1 MLB analyst C.J. Nitkowski said on the network Thursday. “They have the great ace in Madison Bumgarner [but] there’s a reason they went out and got Mike Leake. There’s a reason Tim Hudson went on the DL then they pushed him to the bullpen. Right now these guys are not helping. Tim Lincecum is not there. Matt Cain has been struggling.

“Overall, when you look at this starting rotation, you’re not overly inspired. You’re just hoping they can get it together.” CSN Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic reported on Leake:

Mike Leake told me he’s running at 75 percent now, doesn’t feel pain while pitching. Giants pretty confident he can return Sunday.

— Alex Pavlovic (@AlexPavlovic) August 19, 2015

That is why Leake could be a significant upgrade. In his five starts before going on the DL, four of those with the Reds, he had a 0.99 ERA and averaged over seven innings a game. If that is the Leake who comes back in the coming days, he will be a massive upgrade to a shaky rotation.

Byrd and Leake are two former Reds who were going nowhere with Cincinnati, but given the state of the Giants at this point of the season, they could both be playing significant roles in this year’s playoff races.

Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The debate no longer exists.

It is over. There is a clear answer by now, and it really isn’t even close enough for an argument to be had.

The National League Central is Major League Baseball’s best division, boasting three of the four best records in the game and the top three in the NL. If that trend holds up over the final six-plus weeks of the regular season, it would be historic, as no division in the wild-card era has ever housed its league’s three best records.

With the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs claiming the only NL winning percentages higher than .567, it is difficult to say those three clubs are not the favorites to claim the available playoff spots, nor that they aren’t the best teams in the league, regardless of what records or run differentials might say.

“I mean, it’s awesome,” Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong told Ryan Fagan of Sporting News last week. “It definitely is. Just shows the kind of talent that we have in the Central right now.”

The talent is truly incredible.

The Cardinals, who have the best record in the majors at 77-43, have a starting rotation that, as an entire group, could be on the fringes of the NL Cy Young Award race this season. It went into Thursday with a 2.76 ERA, 3.31 FIP, 0.71 home runs allowed per nine innings and stranding 79.3 percent of its baserunners. All of those numbers rank in the top two in the majors, as did the rotation’s 13.5 FanGraphs WAR.

Since the start of the live-ball era in 1920, there have been only 21 other seasons where a rotation has had a lower ERA than what the Cardinals went into Wednesday with, and no team has been lower since the 1985 Los Angeles Dodgers. Only one team—the 1972 Cleveland Indians—has stranded runners at the rate the Cardinals have to this point, according to FanGraphs.

Oh, and the Cardinals are doing this without their ace, Adam Wainwright, who was lost for the season after four starts.

“The Cardinals are your working man’s old-school rotation,” an NL scout told Jayson Stark of ESPN.com. “Other than [Carlos] Martinez, they don’t really have those big-velocity guys. Plus they’re usually out of there after five or six innings, and then a bunch of relievers go out there and finish the job. But what they do, they do better than anybody.”

The Cubs have been the surprise emergence. It’s not that improvement wasn’t expected after a 73-win season, but improving to the point of basically locking up a playoff berth by September seemed like a pipe dream considering all the young, somewhat unproven talent and lack of a true ace in the rotation.

But the youngsters have mostly produced: Anthony Rizzo has blossomed into an MVP candidate—it is still Bryce Harper’s award to lose, of course—and rookies Kris Bryant, Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber are showing loads of promise. Jake Arrieta has developed into an ace since arriving from Baltimore two seasons ago, Jon Lester has been solid, and Hector Rondon, Justin Grimm and Pedro Strop make up a strong bullpen.

“In my mind’s eye, I am going to be talking playoffs this year,” first-year manager Joe Maddon told reporters in November, per the Chicago Tribune, and that comment looks more accurate by the day. In the fourth season of the Cubs’ Theo Epstein era, they are finally a legitimate pennant contender.

Meanwhile, the low-market Pirates have shown that a once-perennial loser can sustain long-term success, which the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds, other teams in the NL Central, have not been able to accomplish.

After 20 consecutive losing seasons, the Pirates finally broke through in 2013, improving by 15 games to take the NL wild-card berth. Last year, they did the same, but they lost to the San Francisco Giants in the play-in game.

It appears they will host that game for a third straight season—this year against the Cubs—as they now have an annual MVP candidate in Andrew McCutchen and a true ace in 24-year-old Gerrit Cole. Both players were first-round draft picks during the franchise’s losing years.

“The fans were discouraged and here comes young [general manager] Neal Huntington in with more of the same: We’re going to grow it, we’re going to build it from within, we’re going to succeed,” Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations John Hart told Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “At some point they get a little tired of hearing it. To Neal’s credit, he stayed the course.”

The emergence of the Pirates, the rise of the Cubs and the perennial excellence of the Cardinals have grown the NL Central into the envy of baseball divisions. And none of these teams give off the stench of a one-hit wonder, including the Cubs, a team still waiting for that first hit.

To the assumed hatred of other teams in the league, this year is looking like a historic one for the division as it rolls its way into heavy October representation.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Los Angeles Dodgers are acquiring a second aging former Philadelphia Phillies superstar, and, like the first, the move has the potential to be an upgrade.

The Dodgers pulled off the biggest waiver deadline trade this year in getting second baseman Chase Utley from Philadelphia, a move made to absorb incumbent second baseman Howie Kendrick’s current hamstring injury, which has him on the disabled list.

Plenty of clubs had August interest in Utley, per Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, but a pair of “mid-level” minor league prospects got it done for the Dodgers, according to Jon Heyman of CBS Sports.

With the way Utley has hit since returning from an ankle injury, this move could be a massive boost for the Dodgers lineup, which remains inconsistent against even mediocre pitching. It proved just that in being swept by the Oakland A’s this week.

The Utley deal, while potentially impactful, does not address the Dodgers’ more serious and immediate need for a reliable bullpen arm. The team’s lack of a solid wing out of the pen was highlighted in the two-game Oakland series. These were possibly two of the Dodgers’ ugliest losses this year, considering the point in the season, the state of the National League West and the fact that L.A. held leads in both games.

ESPN.com’s Mark Saxon reported Wednesday afternoon that “the Dodgers will receive $4 million from Philadelphia to offset the $6 million remaining on Utley’s $15 million salary.” This would set Utley up to become a free agent after the season.

Acquiring Utley can certainly help L.A. Kendrick is expected to be out until early September, per Steve Dilbeck of the Los Angeles Times, and Utley has been hot since returning from the disabled list, batting .484 (15-for-31) with five doubles and a home run in eight games. Before missing 37 games with the ankle issues, Utley had hit .179/.257/.275 in 249 plate appearances. He had started the year 9-for-91.

If Utley brings his latest brand of production to the Dodgers, it will be a big help to a lineup that scored eight runs in its last three games, against starters Anthony DeSclafani, Felix Doubront and Jesse Chavez. In the way Marco Scutaro caught fire after being traded to the San Francisco Giants in 2012, Utley can be that kind of small-sample boost to the Dodgers as he plays second and probably some third and first base.

“His bat speed is very good,” Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. told 94WIP in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “You can see his legs are underneath him, and it seems pretty clear that there was something going on in his ankle that was limiting him in some way, shape or form. He looks like he’s pretty much a man on a mission.”

Amaro also noted that it was “very likely” Chase Utley would remain in Philadelphia through the end of the year, which obviously wasn’t true. The first comment wasn’t false, though: Utley is hitting the ball harder now than he has all season. Daren Willman of MLBFarm.com tweeted as much:

Utley fills a hole in the lineup, but he does not improve the Dodgers bullpen, which has nearly been the worst in the league since the All-Star break. Like Utley, the group is also producing some hitter-friendly exit velocities of late, as the bullpen went into Wednesday with a hard-hit rate of nearly 30 percent and a soft-hit rate of 17.5 percent, the fifth-worst in the league since the break, according to FanGraphs. 

This has been a problem for the Dodgers all season, as it seems like the only thing the bullpen is great at is strikeouts—its 26.4 percent strikeout rate leads the league—but it also strands only 71 percent of runners, the second-worst mark in the NL. 

In the two games in Oakland, the bullpen allowed six runs in 4.1 innings. Jim Johnson, the arm acquired from the Atlanta Braves at the non-waiver deadline to be the bridge to closer Kenley Jansen, has allowed 14 earned runs in six innings (eight appearances), making the unit significantly worse and more unreliable than it was before his arrival.

“Obviously we’re going to have to find ways to get the ball from our starters to Kenley,” manager Don Mattingly told reporters Tuesday. “We’ve got guys who can do that, and I trust that we’re going to do that.”

Trust is hardly evident, as Mattingly, just like last season, has had to stick with his starters too long into games. (Think back to the elimination game in last year’s playoffs, with Clayton Kershaw against the St. Louis Cardinals. A similar thing happened Wednesday, when Alex Wood bore too much of the burden in the decisive sixth inning.) The alternative has been to wear out the couple of arms that can get high-leverage outs until they are fatigued enough that they are no longer solutions.

“Clone Kenley Jansen,” Grantland’s Jonah Keri said this Wednesday on Baseball Tonight. “That’s the solution to their problems.”

Utley is a good gamble for the Dodgers. He is low-risk, high-reward at its finest for a team that can throw its money around as a Band-Aid. But unless he can pitch effectively in game-deciding situations (spoiler alert: he cannot), the same problem that made the Dodgers vulnerable down the stretch and into the postseason last year will again bite them in 2015.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

In an age where franchise values are skyrocketing, television contracts are doing the same and player deals rise in worth every winter, Major League Baseball is the one North American professional sports league constantly having its finances evaluated and booming payrolls criticized. 

Yet, since baseball is the one sport without a salary cap, the teams are free to spend as their owners see fit. However, this also makes the bargain player—great production on the cheap—so much more valuable. Time and again, franchises that wisely utilize resources—both players and money—have found regular-season success, which is what they can most control since postseason results depend a fair amount on small-sample-size luck.

Teams that get great value on one contract can spend more on other needs, improving their chances to win. It’s simple, really. And it is why Bleacher Report is taking a look at the best bargains in baseball by putting together MLB‘s All-Value Contract Team as this season enters its stretch run into randomness.

Using advanced statistics like weighted runs created plus (wRC+) from FanGraphs and adjusted OPS (OPS+) and adjusted ERA (ERA+) from Baseball-Reference, along with FanGraphs WAR (fWAR), we will gauge production. All stats are through Sunday.

And using Cot’s Baseball Contracts, we will measure value in current salaries. Rookie contracts are exempt from the list as those deals are not based on production, but arbitration-eligible players are in play. Also, to ensure we find the best values in the outfield, we will designate those players simply as outfielders and not by specific positions, much like the All-Star Game does.

It’s time to start counting pennies…

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