Kuzul

Because the baseball gods decree that every season must feature an overly complicated debate about the “V” in “MVP,” 2016 has given us the curious case of Kris Bryant.

There’s no need to be curious about Bryant’s stardom. It’s legit. The Chicago Cubs picked him No. 2 overall in 2013, and all he’s done since then is emerge as a No. 1 prospect and last year’s National League Rookie of the Year. For his next act, he has eyes on the NL Most Valuable Player Award.

That’s not inside information, mind you. It’s more like a hunch, based on the reality that Bryant is having an amazing season that only seems to be getting better. Case in point, his day at the office in the Cubs’ 9-6 thrashing of the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday:

With five more hits, Bryant is now batting .296 with a .956 OPS. The latter ranks third in the National League. With 30 homers, he’s tied with Nolan Arenado for first. With 78 RBI, he climbed into the NL’s top 10.

Meanwhile, don’t forget about his defense.

Cubs skipper Joe Maddon has tasked Bryant, a natural third baseman, with playing left field and right field in addition to the hot corner. Per advanced metrics like defensive runs saved and ultimate zone rating, Bryant has played well at all three positions.

No wonder wins above replacement really likes Bryant. He entered Thursday worth 5.5 WAR at Baseball-Reference.com, the highest of any NL player. Per FanGraphs, he exited Thursday worth 6.4 WAR, also the highest of any NL player.

Just as important, Bryant has not been struck by the Curse of Mike Trout. At 77-43, the Cubs have won five more games than any other team. And so, behold his case for the MVP: He’s the best player in the league who also plays on the best team in the league.

Pretty good as far as MVP cases go, you dig? Of course you do. I can see your shovel and everything.

But ironclad? Not quite. In part because of this guy:

That’s Anthony Rizzo, who is also a really good baseball player on the Chicago Cubs. He’s hitting .291 with a .960 OPS, 25 homers and 86 RBI. He’s been Bryant’s equal on offense, if not a little better.

This is potentially a stick in the spokes of Bryant’s MVP case. Simply being the best player on the best team is sometimes good enough to sway the voters. But they’ve also been known to like players who carry entire teams on their shoulders. Bryant and Rizzo have done that together.

To boot, Rizzo has batted behind Bryant all season. The jury’s still out on whether lineup protection is actually a thing, but there’s more than enough anecdotal evidence in favor of the idea. It’s even coming from the two guys themselves. According to Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune, Rizzo often tells Bryant “I’m your Prince” in reference to when Miguel Cabrera won American League MVPs in 2012 and 2013 with Prince Fielder batting behind him. Bryant doesn’t push back.

“I can’t say enough about having him behind me, and a mentor and someone who I learn a lot from just how he goes about his at-bats,” Bryant said. “Even though he’s a lefty and I’m a righty, it seems like they pitch us very similarly.”

Our own Danny Knobler recently wondered whether Bryant and Rizzo’s MVP cases might cancel each other out. This would appear to be an especially prevalent concern for Bryant. He’s having the better all-around season, but odds offered by ESPN.com’s Dan Szymborski (h/t David Schoenfield) actually place him lower than Rizzo in the National League pecking order.

And then there’s this guy:

If Rizzo’s presence doesn’t deny Bryant the award, Corey Seager’s could. The Los Angeles Dodgers‘ rookie shortstop is blowing everyone away with a .311 average, an .893 OPS and 21 home runs. These numbers give him a huge lead in the NL Rookie of the Year race, and his MVP case is only gaining steam.

After all, Seager’s only been hotter as the Dodgers have been without Clayton Kershaw and his almighty left arm. Not even counting two more hits on Thursday, Seager has hit .329 with a .907 OPS since Kershaw last started in late June. This is a big reason why the Dodgers have played such good baseball without their ace.

Seager won’t necessarily end up with better numbers than Bryant if he keeps this up. But if he does, he’ll be the big “narrative” candidate for the award. That is, the candidate who stepped up the most when it mattered most.

If clutchness does end up being a factor, that won’t be the only trump card Seager has on Bryant. As good as Bryant has been, he hasn’t been Seager’s equal with runners in scoring position or in higher-leverage situations:

Note: These stats are current through August 17.

Since Seager’s surge hasn’t actually won the Dodgers anything yet, he probably wouldn’t beat either Bryant or Rizzo for the MVP if the season ended today. And between the two, Bryant’s all-around excellence would probably allow for a narrow victory.

But if Bryant wants even a narrow victory in November, the least he’ll have to do is finish this season as strong as he’s started it. To be absolutely safe, he’ll likely have to outperform Rizzo down the stretch and hope that Seager and/or the Dodgers stumble at the same time.

Call it yet another tall order for a guy who never seems to face anything other than increasingly tall orders. But given his track record, it’s hard not to picture him nodding and saying, “Challenge accepted.”

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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For some teams, questing for a World Series trophy requires sticking with whatever’s working.

The Toronto Blue Jays don’t have that luxury.

Things are mostly good for the reigning AL East champs. Their 68-52 record puts them a game ahead of the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox in this year’s race. They’re 57-38 since opening with a thud in April. Neither the Orioles nor the Red Sox have that kind of momentum.

The prime mover in the Blue Jays’ 2015 success was their offense, which is still going strong with the third-most runs in the American League this season. But with a 3.73 ERA that leads the AL—Cleveland is second at 3.80—Toronto’s starting pitching has been even better. The usual wisdom says not to fix it if it ain’t broke.

The Blue Jays, though, have been determined to try to fix it so that it doesn’t break.

Such is the point of moving from a five-man rotation to a six-man rotation. It was either that or transition Aaron Sanchez, a youngster with a 2.84 ERA, to the bullpen to preserve a right arm that’s already thrown a career-high 152.1 innings.

But since that would have required replacing Sanchez with new arrival Francisco Liriano, a veteran with a 5.46 ERA, it’s understandable that general manager Ross Atkins came down on the side of “nope.”

“The biggest thing is input from different people after something was more concrete, or closer to it, and the fact that Francisco Liriano was so open to everything,” Atkins said, per Gregor Chisholm of MLB.com. “Then the more we thought about the potential of a six-man rotation not just benefiting Aaron but benefiting the others in the rotation at this point in the season.”

Because the comparisons are unavoidable, this is a case of the Blue Jays being more like the 2015 New York Mets with Matt Harvey than the 2012 Washington Nationals with Stephen Strasburg. Rather than let Sanchez pitch until he maxes out his innings and then shut him down, the Blue Jays are spacing out his innings in hopes that he’ll still have some bullets left for the postseason.

To boot, the Blue Jays don’t have to worry about the Tommy John factor. They’re merely cognizant of the fact Sanchez has already pitched 19 more innings than he ever has as a pro. They don’t want to wear him out. The man himself seems to want the same thing.

“You got to look long term with this,” he said in late July, according to Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star. “I’m not just here to pitch in 2016. I’m here to pitch five, six, seven [years], however long it is.”

Nobody’s saying this is a foolproof plan. Not even Atkins, who said “there’s no perfect answer, there’s no absolute” to the Sanchez conundrum, according to Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.

The obvious drawback is that a six-man rotation means the Blue Jays will be limiting the exposure of not only Sanchez but also of J.A. Happ, Marco Estrada and Marcus Stroman. Happ also has a 2.96 ERA. Estrada is at 3.20. Stroman has pitched to a 3.27 ERA in eight starts since July 1.

If anyone is wringing his or her hands over how having a wrench thrown into their routines might mess with Toronto’s starters, it’s not just you.

“If you had a bad start, that would be hard to sit on for five days and then go out and pitch on the sixth day,” former Blue Jays All-Star Roy Halladay said, according to Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun. “That, for me, would be the tough part, having a short, two-, three-, four-inning start and then thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got to wait this much longer to get out there again.'”

However, any and all hand-wringing may be much ado about nothing. 

It’s not easy to study six-man rotations directly—there haven’t been many of them, and they don’t tend to last—but Russell Carleton investigated the effect of extra rest at Fox Sports.

His findings: “I looked at strikeouts and walks and home runs and singles and a few other outcomes. Pitchers pitching with extra rest don’t actually show any extra ability. They don’t suffer for it either. They just kinda pitch like we would normally expect.”

As long as extra rest doesn’t have a negative effect, that bodes well for Toronto’s six-man rotation. 

And there’s more! Although Carleton posited a six-man rotation “wouldn’t necessarily make pitchers less susceptible to the injury bug,” Rob Arthur suggested otherwise at FiveThirtyEight. From 2006 through 2014, he found that 1.7 percent of pitchers who started on three days’ rest reported an injury within two weeks. On the normal four days’ rest, the rate dropped to 1.0 percent. On five days’ rest, the rate dropped to 0.8 percent.

This bodes even better for the Blue Jays’ experiment. It would be one thing if they were spreading out a collection of starters who were all in their physical prime. Instead, the picture looks like this:

• Aaron Sanchez: a 24-year-old who is already in uncharted innings territory.
• Marcus Stroman: an undersized 25-year-old who is on track to exceed his high of 166.1 innings.
• J.A. Happ: a 33-year-old who has never topped 172 innings.
• Marco Estrada: a 33-year-old who’s maxed out at 181 innings and who’s been limited to 132.1 innings this season by a bad back.
• Francisco Liriano: a 32-year-old who hasn’t topped 190 innings since 2010, in part because of occasional health woes.
• R.A. Dickey: a knuckleballer who has been durable but who is also 41 years old.

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect test subject for a six-man rotation. These guys have gotten the Blue Jays this far. But for that to last, they may need the breather they’re getting.

Whether this experiment will work is still a matter of “if.” Hence the use of the word “experiment.” If each team had enough talented pitchers for a six-man rotation and there was tried-and-true evidence of its effectiveness, they’d be the norm. Until then, six-man rotations will remain oddities that inspire more curiosity than conclusions.

But there isn’t much to suggest six-man rotations are inherently dangerous. And in the case of the Blue Jays, it could be just the thing to preserve not only their best pitcher but also all of their pitchers. If it works, they’ll waltz into the postseason with a strong offense and strong pitching.

It never hurts to have either of those things in October. Having both can only help.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. All stats and records up to date heading into Wednesday’s games. 

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In the American League MVP race, one undersized dynamo is now being hotly pursued by another undersized dynamo.

The latter is Mookie Betts, who you’ve probably noticed in your news feed recently. It’s well and good he singled and made a goofy catch in the Boston Red Sox‘s 3-2 win over the Cleveland Indians on Monday. But that’s not as cool as what Betts did in Sunday’s 16-2 drubbing of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

In that one, Betts went yard not once, not twice, but thrice. As proof, I submit these moving pictures:

That was Betts’ second three-homer game of 2016. Among Red Sox hitters, only he and Ted Williams have trodden that ground. Good company. Betts also became the first Red Sox player to collect three homers and eight RBI in a game since Bill Mueller in 2003. Less good company, but still cool.

“I mean, I was just swinging at good pitches and was finally able to just swing the bat right,” Betts said afterward, via Tim Britton of the Providence Journal. “The last couple of days, I hadn’t been swinging it right and hadn’t been swinging at good pitches. I had just been late. So today I came in early and got back in that little groove.”

Betts can be as modest as he wants, but his numbers entitle him to as much arrogance as he wants. Through 114 games, he’s batting .313 with a .914 OPS, 26 home runs and 18 stolen bases. To boot, there’s no ignoring the 23-year-old’s defense in right field. Defensive runs saved and ultimate zone rating both place him as an elite defender. He’s right up there with Jason Heyward and Adam Eaton.

In a related story, this is why Googling “Mookie Betts MVP” will return a large number of recent posts.

Betts indeed deserves his place in that conversation. If his surface-level statistics aren’t evidence enough, there’s always the go-to statistic in modern MVP discussions: wins above replacement.

Entering play Monday, Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs agreed on the American League’s top four players in that department: 

Of course, WAR is merely a guideline for which players should be considered for MVP. If it was as simple as giving the award to the dude with the highest WAR, Mike Trout would be on track for his fifth-straight AL MVP. 

There are other things at work in MVP discussions. The award gravitates toward players with big offensive numbers, especially if they’re in service to winning teams. If said player is the glue that holds said winning team together, even better.

This is why, as R.J. Anderson argued at CBSSports.com, Jose Altuve is the man to beat for the AL MVP today. He’s hitting an AL-best (and patently absurd) .362. He also leads in on-base percentage (.427) and hits (167). Further, he has a career-high 19 homers to go with 26 steals on the side. Without all this, a mediocre 61-57 Houston Astros team would be downright bad.

We’re not here to take anything away from Altuve. If the season did end today, his award would be well-earned. Maybe he’s no Mike Trout, but he bears all the usual features of an MVP. More power to him.

But if anyone can loom large enough down the stretch to overtake the 5’6″ Altuve, why not the 5’9″ Betts?

There’s a pretty good case to be made for Betts now, after all. His excellent production has been in service of a 65-52 Red Sox team that, though only a tad better than the Astros, is on track to emerge from a brutal AL East race with a ticket to the postseason. 

And while Betts has been helping the cause all season, he’s now flat-out leading the charge. Not counting Monday, he’s a .374 hitter with a 1.113 OPS and 10 home runs in 35 games since July 1. He’s been as hot as anyone. That includes Altuve, who’s hit .373 with a .991 OPS since July 1.

This is nothing Betts hasn’t done before. It’s reminiscent of last season, when a slow start gave way to a red-hot finish around mid-June. But this time, Betts’ hot hitting comes with a slightly different flavor.

As Brooks Baseball shows, these were his power zones before July:

Betts, a right-handed hitter, was mostly dangerous against middle-in pitches. That’s to be expected. He’s not the kind of hitter who can reach out and poke balls over the fence to right field. His M.O. was to use his lightning-quick wrists to turn on pitches and blast them to left field. If a pitcher kept the ball away, he was generally safe from Betts’ power.

But since July, Betts’ power zones look like this:

Suddenly, that outer part of the plate doesn’t look like much of a safe space. As he demonstrated by pulling one of Zack Greinke’s breaking balls over the Green Monster on Sunday, Betts is suddenly capable of reaching out and punishing pitches away from him. It’s a new trick, and it hasn’t robbed him of his tried-and-true trick of punishing inside pitches.

With this taken care of, you now have to dive pretty deep to find flaws in Betts’ game. Maybe he can’t stay this hot, but him staying some level of hot for the rest of the season is in the cards.

For the Red Sox, that could be the difference between finishing their run to October and falling short. They didn’t need Betts to carry the load in the first half. Literally everyone was hitting then. It’s been a different story in the second half. The Red Sox’s offense has been less dominant, in large part because mainstays like David Ortiz, Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr. have gone cool.

Due to Trout’s general existence and Altuve’s seemingly endless supply of hits, there’s a good chance Betts won’t finish 2016 as the American League’s best player. But if he stays hot and boosts the Red Sox into the postseason, it’ll be hard to argue he’s not the American League’s most valuable player.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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With Giancarlo Stanton having suffered yet another significant injury, now’s a good time to repurpose the catchphrase for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.

This time, it counts.

After placing Stanton on the disabled list with a groin injury early Sunday, per the Miami Herald‘s Andre C. Fernandez, the Miami Marlins earned a brief reprieve from the bad vibes with a 5-4 win over the Chicago White Sox. Their 61-56 record ties them with the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League‘s second wild-card spot, giving them a shot at their first postseason berth since 2003.

Immediately after the game, however, the bad vibes came rushing back. Joe Frisaro of MLB.com passed along the crushing Stanton news from Marlins skipper Don Mattingly:

It’s not quite a given that Stanton’s groin injury, which he suffered trying to leg out a double in Saturday’s game against the White Sox, will cost him the rest of the season. But even in leaving the door ajar for the slugging right fielder to return, Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill was careful not to get anyone’s hopes up.

“It’s a Grade 3 strain of his groin,” he said, per Frisaro. “We’re going to rehab it, and best-case scenario is a six-week return. Obviously, there is still opportunity for ‘G’ to be back this season’s end. But obviously, it was a significant injury and we’ll see how rehab goes.”

That sound you hear is a distressingly familiar tune.

With Stanton’s 2016 season likely over after 103 games, this is the fourth season out of the past five in which he’s fallen short of 140 games. He may only be 26, but that track record should spur serious discussions within the Marlins about what can be done to keep him healthy. With the bulk of his injuries afflicting his legs, a move from right field to first base should be on the table.

But that’s something for the Marlins to worry about later. For now, the question that needs answering is more straightforward: How the heck are they going to survive this?

It’s impossible to dress up Stanton’s 2016 season as one of his best. No thanks to an extended slump in May and June that rendered him one of baseball’s worst hitters, his .826 OPS is the worst of his career.

However, this is no excuse to downplay the impact of Stanton’s injury.

He was good before he went into that slump, putting up a 1.023 OPS with 10 homers in 26 games. He was also good after it, with a .943 OPS and 13 home runs in 48 games. Included in the latter sample size is the longest home run ever measured by Statcast, as good a sign as any that his unmatched power was still, well, unmatched.

The thought of being without Stanton’s power in the final six weeks of 2016 is not a happy one for the Marlins.

They’ve had a hard enough time hitting for power with him in the lineup. Their 96 total home runs rank ahead of only the Atlanta Braves in all of baseball. With Stanton and his 25 homers now on the sidelines, 26 percent of Miami’s home run output has suddenly vanished.

To make matters worse, Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reported Friday that first baseman Justin Bour is unlikely to return from his own injury until September. That’s 15 more homers out of reach, leaving Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich as the only double-digit home run guys still standing.

Matt Snyder of CBSSports.com summed up this not-so-pretty picture succinctly: “Home runs aren’t everything and the Marlins are already proof of that by hanging in the wild-card race. They are game-changers, though, and the Marlins now are mostly stuck trying to manufacture runs or luckily enough to string together lots of singles in a row for big innings.”

This isn’t an entirely hopeless scenario. The Marlins still have a decent collection of good hitters even without Stanton and Bour. Ichiro Suzuki is one of them, and he figures to be a bigger part of Miami’s plans going forward.

But Ichiro isn’t the most secure Band-Aid. It looks great that he’s hitting .316, but the 42-year-old’s age is catching up with him. He’s hit well under .300 since the break. Plus, Stanton has hit more home runs in 2016 than Ichiro has in the last six seasons combined.

As such, this MLB.com report about the Marlins having Alex Rodriguez on their radar was probably inevitable:

“I think we’re going through that process right now,” Hill said about exploring various pick-up options, per Frisaro. “We’re putting our list together of options. [Rodriguez] is available, so he will be on that list. We’ll see where that goes.”

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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There’s not a lot of joy to be derived from the New York Yankees‘ present.

Their 58-56 record is far from an Atlanta Braves-level disaster, but it marks the fourth year in a row they’ve been mired in mediocrity. And for the first time in a long time, they’ve accepted they need to make things worse to get better. When New York moved Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran at the August 1 trade deadline, its first rebuild in over two decades was on.

There is, however, some joy to be derived from the Yankees’ present. At least they now have Gary Sanchez. We knew the 23-year-old was an elite catching prospect when the club called him up last week. Now we know he can do things like this:

Sanchez’s first home run was the exclamation point on his coming-out party. It was one of four hits he collected in a 9-4 romp over the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, and it had the Yankees a’buzzin‘.

“We’ve liked the way this kid has swung the bats for years,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said, per Craig Forde of MLB.com. “I think he’s done a good job catching. To have his first homer, and he had some big hits tonight, was really nice to see.”

Fun fact: Girardi‘s not kidding about the “for years” part.

A thunderous bat that produced a .799 OPS and 99 home runs in the minors makes Sanchez arguably the top catching prospect in baseball, but it was in 2011 that he first appeared on top-100 lists. 

As a junior member of a farm system Baseball America ranked at No. 5 in MLB, it was easy then to imagine Sanchez as the finishing touch of a new Yankees core that would already feature Jesus Montero, Dellin Betances, Manny Banuelos, Eduardo Nunez and Slade Heathcott.

Obviously, that didn’t pan out. That could be why New York is taking no chances with its latest attempt to build a winner from the ground up.

The team’s farm system was stuck in neutral just a few months ago. Nobody thought much of the system in 2014 and 2015, and they were singing the same old song going into 2016. Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus and ESPN.com all put the Yankees’ farm system in the middle of the pack.

It only took about one week in late July and early August to change this. When Chapman, Miller and Beltran went out the door, 10 prospects came in. Included among them were two elites, shortstop Gleyber Torres and outfielder Clint Frazier, and other well-regarded names like left-hander Justus Sheffield, right-hander Dillon Tate and outfielder Billy McKinney.

Keith Law of ESPN.com and Jim Callis of MLB.com have both elevated the Yankees system to among the top three in baseball, with Callis offering this note: “They may come in No. 2 in our rankings, but the Yanks do have the deepest system in the game.”

That doesn’t strain the limits of believability. After all, Sanchez is just one of seven young Yankees in MLB.com’s current top 100:

Not pictured here are McKinney and Tate, who popped up on preseason top-100 lists and may do so again if they put rough 2016 seasons behind them.

Elsewhere in the system is right-hander James Kaprielian, who made it into Baseball America‘s midseason top 100. Tyler Austin, a first baseman/third baseman/outfielder, isn’t on any top-100 lists. But with a 1.061 OPS at Triple-A, he has to be on the Yankees’ radar. The same must be true of Aaron Judge, whose .844 OPS at Triple-A is a substantial improvement over what he did in a reality-check 2015 season (.680 OPS in Triple-A).

If Judge and Austin join Sanchez in The Show in the coming weeks, New York’s future will come further into focus. So it will go in 2017 and 2018. Of all the names mentioned above, the only one who doesn’t figure to be ready for the majors within the next two years is Blake Rutherford, whom the Yankees just drafted out of high school in June.

Oh, and don’t forget the other young talent the Yankees have.

Betances, 28, is set to close games for years to come. It’s too soon for anyone to give up on right-hander Luis Severino, 22, who was an elite prospect just last season. Slugging first baseman Greg Bird, 23, will be healthy next year after missing 2016 due to a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Rob Refsnyder, 25, could blossom into a useful utility player. Torres and Jorge Mateo may have higher ceilings, but Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro are A) effective and B) only 26.

Exactly how the Yankees should handle all their young talent is a matter for another day, or one that can be left up to them. All that’s clear now is they have a lot of it, and they have a lot of it at the perfect time.

Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira are just about finished in New York. CC Sabathia will be finished after 2017. Brett Gardner, Brian McCann and Chase Headley are likely gone after 2018. These departures mark the opening of a window. Like they did with Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera in the early and mid-1990s, the Yankees can lay the foundation for a new dynasty.

And at low costs, to boot. Then whatever the Yankees don’t have after 2018, they’ll be able to buy.

Between Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Jose Fernandez and many others, the 2018-2019 class of free agents will be L-O-A-D-E-D. It was apparent last winter the Yankees were setting their sights on all that talent.

After recent events, one imagines a shopping spree that winter could do for the Yankees what the Chicago Cubs‘ shopping spree this past winter did for them: take a young team that already had a lot of potential and use a few blank checks to fill in the blanks.

It may not be until then that the Yankees are ready to contend for championships again. They’re only in a position to take whatever bright spots they can get the rest of the way this year. In 2017 and 2018, there’s bound to be growing pains.

But to build an empire, you have to start somewhere. We know where the last Yankees empire started. Years from now, we may be able to say their next empire started with Sanchez.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Last year, Carlos Correa somehow lived up to the hype after beginning his major league career as baseball’s best prospect. After that, it was only fair that there was a huge spotlight on him coming into 2016.

If anyone out there has lost sight of Correa since then, they should know two things: One, it’s not your fault. Two, he’s still really, really good.

Nobody knows this better than the Minnesota Twins. Correa is a big reason why they just dropped three of four to the Houston Astros at Target Field. The 21-year-old cranked a two-run homer in a four-RBI day in a 7-5 win Tuesday, and he wreaked more havoc in both ends of a Thursday doubleheader.

In the day game, Correa helped the Astros to a 15-7 win with a long three-run dinger:

In the night game, Correa helped the Astros to a 10-2 win with an even longer solo dinger:

Like that, Correa’s sophomore season now looks suspiciously like his rookie season. In 2015, Correa hit .279 with an .857 OPS and 22 home runs in 99 games. In 111 games this year, he’s hitting .273 with an .850 OPS and 18 home runs.

It’s not a perfect match, but it’s close. Weighted runs created plus, which measures offensive performance on a scale of league average, calculates Correa has gone from being 33 percent better than the average hitter to 30 percent better than the average hitter. Offensively, the difference between his Rookie of the Year campaign and his quieter sophomore campaign is a split hair.

This is allowing the former No. 1 pick to keep a special place among his fellow shortstops. He was the best-hitting shortstop in the league last year. This year, he’s being outpaced by only Corey Seager and Aledmys Diaz. (Manny Machado has played more games at third base than short.)

And yet Correa has seemed invisible for so much of 2016. My powers of deduction lead me to believe that has something to do with the shortstop getting lost next to Jose Altuve. The 5’6″, 165-pound second baseman is a small man who’s casting a large, possibly MVP-sized shadow. It also hasn’t helped that the Astros haven’t been good and aren’t getting better. Before winning three in a row, they had lost 11 of 14.

Correa also shoulders some of the blame. There was talk in some parts (including these parts) at the outset of the year that he would contend for the American League MVP award. He fell flat in the face of those expectations. Through the end of May, he was hitting .253 and OPSing .762.

But since then? How about .291 with a .928 OPS and 10 of his 18 home runs? Pretty good, right?

Yeah, pretty good. And the difference isn’t just in the surface numbers.

Simply by comparing Correa’s 2015 to his 2016 season, it’s clear he’s used more of a measured approach this year. His chase rate on pitches outside the zone has dropped. And with it, his walk percentage has risen from 9.3 percent to 12.1 percent.

There’s a fine line between being patient and being passive, though. Correa was on the wrong side of it early on. He struck out in 24.2 percent of his plate appearances in April and May, up from 18.1 percent in his rookie season.

Jake Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle saw what the problem was, noting in late May that Correa was “giving away pitches for strike one and putting himself in holes early.” He also wasn’t adjusting to a heavy diet of inside heat.

“I think he’s a very selective hitter and sometimes might be too selective in trying to wait out the perfect pitch,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said, per Kaplan. “I think as he matures and grows, he’ll learn when to hunt early-count fastballs or early-count strikes and maybe not wait all deep into the count until the pitcher’s in control.”

Cue the light bulb over Correa’s head turning on.

Since June, his strikeout rate has fallen to 17.3 percent. He hasn’t been swinging at more pitches, as his overall swing rate has remained stuck at exactly 43.7 percent. This has more to do with his swinging at the right pitches.

As Correa was breaking out in 2015, Brooks Baseball shows the righty swinger was at his most dangerous against inside pitches. Lo and behold, Brooks Baseball also shows his swing pattern has shifted from this in April and May:

To this since June:

Correa was doing a good job of keeping his swings confined to the strike zone in April and May but was aggressive in going after pitches in the outer third of the zone. Since June, he’s cleaned that up and played to his strength on the inner half of the plate.

This, combined with Correa’s good strike-zone judgment, helps explain the decline in whiffs. It also helps explain his increase in power. Although he had straightaway center in his sights Thursday, he’s mostly been pull-happy with a 45.4 pull percentage since June. That’s a good way to find power.

There are still things Correa can improve on. To hit for even more power, it wouldn’t hurt for him to get the ball airborne more often. And he remains a mystery on the other side of the ball. Correa can make amazing plays, but the advanced metrics continue to rate him as a below-average fielder.

The player Correa is, however, should not be taken lightly.

We now have 210 games of Correa being one of the best offensive shortstops in baseball. And now that he’s shown he has the ability to make important adjustments in addition to his insane natural talent, this is something everyone ought to get used to.

So that spotlight? It should probably be a little bigger.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

October will be here soon. Do you know where your playoff teams are?

It’s only August, so we don’t either. All we know is which clubs we think are going to make it into the postseason, and we’re more than glad to share.

Having already offered awards predictions at the three-quarter mark of the 2016 Major League Baseball season, it’s on to predicting which 10 clubs are going to be playing in October. To do this, we’ll need to weigh the standings and the state of each contender and then take a somewhat educated, somewhat wild guess.

We’ll start in the American League with the wildest pennant race of them all.

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Just when the New York Yankees allowed us to think we might be done forever with controversies centered around Alex Rodriguez, manager Joe Girardi pulled us back in.

In case you’ve recently crawled out of a cave with no television and/or spotty Wi-Fi, we’re in the final days of A-Rod’s career. After 12 years of Alex’s occasionally great, occasionally not-so-great and presently bad service for the Yankees, the club announced Sunday it will release the 41-year-old slugger from his contract, which runs through 2017, after he plays his last game at Yankee Stadium on Friday.

If you hadn’t been in that cave, you could have seen this coming.

Rodriguez returned from his 2014 suspension to have a heck of a season in 2015, but he’s hit just .204 with a .609 OPS in 2016. He’s also been stuck on 696 career home runs since July 18. All this has forced Girardi to mainly confine Rodriguez to the bench. When the club finally embraced an overdue rebuilding phase at the trade deadline, phasing out A-Rod became an inevitable next step.

And yet there was no fire and brimstone when the word came down Sunday. A-Rod was emotional in a press conference, but not angry. Ditto for the Yankees. Given how just how sour things got between them during the whole Biogenesis thing, this goes to show how far things have come in the last two years.

Since the split did indeed seem so darn amiable, it was no surprise when Girardi tee’d Rodriguez for a proper farewell in the final week of a 22-year career.

“If he wants to play in every game, I’ll find a way,” the Yankees skipper said, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

That brings us, at last, to A-Rod controversy No. 4,674.

So far in the final days of A-Rod’s career, the Yankees have played two games against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. A-Rod did not start in a 5-3 loss Tuesday night, nor did he start in a 9-4 win Wednesday night. In all, he’s come to the plate once.

And not by choice.

“I came to the stadium hoping to play all three games, maybe two out of three,” Rodriguez said Tuesday, per Barry M. Bloom of MLB.com. “[Girardi] just said, ‘We’re trying to win games.'”

Rodriguez went on to call Girardi’s decision “surprising and shocking.” Those two words can also be used to describe A-Rod’s entire career, in which he’s balanced being a 14-time All-Star and three-time MVP being twice connected to chemical enhancement and frequently playing the part of a heel straight out of professional wrestling.

However, A-Rod did his time for performance-enhancing drugs in 2014 and has played the good soldier ever since his return. He can’t be faulted for wanting to go out with dignity. For that matter, can you blame him if he wanted to get as many chances as possible to bump his career home run total to 700?

All you can do, really, is wonder what Girardi’s deal is. Even the explanation he gave to ESPN.com’s Andrew Marchand and others on Wednesday doesn’t clear things up:

Ah, right…except for the fact no manager in the game knows farewell tours better than Girardi.

He’s overseen two of them, one of which featured him routinely prioritizing respect for the farewell tourer over his team’s chances of winning. Mariano Rivera’s final year in 2013 was everything anybody could have hoped for. But when Derek Jeter bid his goodbyes in 2014, Girardi frequently batted him second despite his .256 average and a .617 OPS that was second-lowest in the American League.

Granted, you can use the ol’ “one of these things is not like the other” when placing the careers of Jeter and Rodriguez side by side. And as bad as Jeter was then, A-Rod’s no better now. The optics suggest Girardi knows this. The whispers confirm it.

“Joe believes he’s done,” a source told ESPN.com’s Wallace Matthews. “And he’s still trying to win these games.”

To the first part: sure. To the second part: seriously?

Their efforts didn’t amount to a postseason trip in 2014, but the Yankees were at least trying to contend during Jeter’s farewell tour. They can only say they’re trying to do that now, and they’ll fool nobody when they do. Teams that are trying to contend don’t trade Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran.

That’s not contending. That’s tanking. Make no mistake—Girardi would be committing a far smaller sin by wasting a few at-bats on A-Rod this week than the one he committed when he wasted many at-bats on Jeter throughout 2014.

The times being what they are, Girardi is wrong to view Rodriguez’s farewell tour as a sideshow the Yankees don’t have time for. On the contrary, it’s a sideshow they should have made time for.

For one week, anyway, it’s one of the only reasons for fans to pay attention to the Yankees. That even goes for Red Sox fans. Their “We want A-Rod!” chant was one of the liveliest moments of Tuesday’s game. When A-Rod was called to pinch-hit on Wednesday, it was the liveliest moment of the game:

There’s no escaping thoughts of what Rodriguez might have done with more moments like this. In particular, thoughts of him hushing all the boos with a home run or two to get him closer to 700. Unlikely perhaps, but certainly a tantalizing appetizer for his final farewell at Yankee Stadium.

Mercifully, our not-so-long national nightmare will end Thursday. Girardi has confirmed Rodriguez will be in the lineup against left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, giving him a chance to get a few hacks in before his big day at home on Friday.

But rather than the tail end of what should have been a jovial farewell, Rodriguez’s final two games will be more like a consolation prize. And a cheap one, at that.

Sure, you can say the Yankees don’t owe A-Rod anything. And realistically speaking, they don’t. Cliff Corcoran of Sports Illustrated crunched the numbers and found A-Rod hasn’t even been worth half of the $275 million contract he signed in 2007. And yes, he’s cost the Yankees headaches in addition to dollars.

Rodriguez’s good times in pinstripes, however, may be just as plentiful as the bad. Punctuated by MVP campaigns in 2005 and 2007, his first five seasons in New York were terrific. And in 2009, he willed the Yankees to their 27th World Series title almost single-handedly. He hit .438 with five home runs in the run-up to the Fall Classic, and each homer was seemingly more clutch than the last.

If nothing else, that’s the A-Rod the Yankees could have honored in his final days. But rather than let Rodriguez live large, Girardi and the Yankees are saying goodbye by letting him know who’s in charge.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Nothing fun lasts forever. Not even the Boston Red Sox‘s lineup, which has gone from spectacular in the first half to slump-tacular in the second half. It needs a pick-me-up.

Enter Andrew Benintendi?

Officially, the answer became yes a week ago. After watching Benintendi launch himself into the top 10 of prospect rankings at Baseball America, MLB.com and ESPN.com, the Red Sox called him up for his major league debut on August 2. Pretty good for a guy who was only drafted a year ago.

The early returns are even better. Playing mostly in left field, Benintendi has hit an even .500 in six games. You might need an electron microscope to see that sample size, but that hasn’t stopped the team from being impressed with the 22-year-old.

“He’s handled the environment probably as good as you could,” Red Sox manager John Farrell said, via Tim Britton of the Providence Journal. “He’s got a beautiful swing. That’s evident by the way he approaches each at-bat. He’s more than impressed in the games he’s played so far.”

Boston slugger David Ortiz cut straight to the point:

In other words: HYYYYYYYPE! Although in this case, it’s hard to blame the Red Sox for getting worked up.

With an .833 OPS and an average of 5.6 runs per game, the Red Sox offense was a juggernaut in a 49-38 first half. But the second half has put a hex on the bats of Ortiz, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Hanley Ramirez, leading to a .746 OPS and 4.7 runs per game. It’s part of the reason they’re only 12-12 since the break.

The Red Sox are basically challenging Benintendi to be for them what Kyle Schwarber was for last year’s Chicago Cubs. Or, for that matter, what Michael Conforto was to last year’s New York Mets. This is quite the challenge.

Fortunately for the Red Sox, Benintendi is quite the player.

Like Schwarber and Conforto, Benintendi was a college star who was a top-10 selection in the draft. And deservedly so, as MLB.com posited Benintendi had “the best all-around tools of any college player” chosen in 2015.

Also like Schwarber and Conforto, Benintendi wasted no time putting his tools to good use. Starting at Low-A Lowell and rising to Double-A Portland, the Arkansas Razorbacks alum compiled a .312 average and .932 OPS in 151 minor league games. Those are the numbers of a great pure hitter.

That’s also the book on Benintendi. I covered the basics in my own scouting report of him back in June. Here’s Christopher Crawford and Wilson Karaman going more in depth at Baseball Prospectus:

Benintendi makes things look easy. Despite being no bigger than 5-foot-10, 180 pounds, he generates easy plus bat speed, and his consistent control of his swing along with excellent hands allows him to make hard contact to pitches on every part of the plate. He recognizes pitches well, and though he’s aggressive, he certainly won’t give away at-bats by swinging at pitches out of the zone. There’s also very little swing-and-miss here, as he possesses excellent hand-eye coordination and has a knack for fouling off tough pitches.

The fact that Benintendi drew more walks (74) than strikeouts (63) in the minors speaks volumes about his approach. As for his knack for hitting, you could see what all the fuss was about as he was collecting three hits Sunday against the Los Angeles Dodgers:

With his first two hits, Benintendi was right on a low-and-away sinker and a low-middle curveball. The low-and-away slider he knocked for his third hit threw him off balance, but he still got enough barrel on it to poke it into right field. On balance, he got good wood on three decent pitches.

It’s too soon to use the word “habit,” but Baseball Savant shows his hits have mostly come against pitches at or below the knees. That’s a good talent to have in today’s MLB. With umpires having become more generous with low strikes, as Jon Roegele of the Hardball Times explained, pitchers have become more aggressive with low pitches:

This is not to be misinterpreted as a sign that Benintendi has total plate coverage. It is, however, a hint that he has the kind of plate coverage a modern hitter should have.

It’s understandable that Farrell is “getting closer” to installing Benintendi as the Red Sox’s everyday left fielder, as he told Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald. It’s also understandable that Farrell isn’t afraid to use the lefty swinger against left-handed pitching. Per MiLB.com, Benintendi had better than a .900 OPS against southpaws at High-A and Double-A this year.

Rather, the biggest question may be if Benintendi can give the Red Sox anything like the power that produced 20 home runs in the minor leagues. He took a step toward answering that with a long double in his first game at Fenway Park Tuesday night:

There could be more where this came from. Per MLBFarm.com, Benintendi kept the power coming in the minors in part because only 33.9 percent of his batted balls were on the ground. Entering Tuesday, just 40 percent of his batted balls in the majors have been on the ground. If he can keep getting balls airborne, the power will come.

It’s not just at the plate that Benintendi could help the Red Sox. He’s also an above-average runner and defender. If his bat adapts to the majors as well as it should, he’ll be yet another asset for the Red Sox’s elite baserunning and outfield defense.

Of course, it bears repeating that none of this should be written in ink.

It will indeed be Benintendi‘s bat that determines how much playing time he gets. And as much as six games can show, they prove nothing. The more time he spends in the big leagues, the more time pitchers are going to have to feel him out. When the book on the Boston rookie is written, it could reveal one or more holes that deconstruct the notion he’s a complete hitter.

But while optimism about Benintendi‘s role on the 2016 Red Sox only goes so far, the optimism they’re feeling is warranted. This is not a case of a team banking on a bundle of unrefined raw tools, a la dozens of prospects in the minors. Nor are the Red Sox banking on a hitter with great minor league numbers but with serious flaws, a la Joey Gallo. Benintendi began his pro career as a polished product and has avoided any and all tarnishing as he’s moved up the ranks.

It’s too soon to call him a star, but it’s not too soon for him to become a star.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Roughly three-quarters of the way through the 2016 Major League Baseball season, plenty of things are coming into focus. That includes awards season, so let’s take a fresh look at who’s in line for hardware.

Ahead lie our latest predictions for the five major awards in the American League and National League: Comeback Player of the Year, Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and Most Valuable Player.

We’re covering who we think will win, not who we think should win. That means taking individual performances into account, as well as whatever preferences the voters tend to have. There’s muddy water in that pond, but we’ll do our best.

Starting with the Comeback Player of the Year awards, let’s take it away.

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