Kuzul

This seemed to be the state of the Boston Red Sox‘s starting rotation at the outset of 2016: a true ace in David Price, a few guys they hoped could be his co-ace, and a knuckleballer who figured to be neither.

This is yet another reason there’s a file marked “Can’t Predict Baseball.”

That knuckleballer is Steven Wright, who’s blurred the line between merely being Boston’s co-ace and being Boston’s true ace. He took a 2.22 ERA into his Monday start against the Chicago White Sox at Fenway Park, and he lowered it even further with nine innings of one-run ball.

Had the Red Sox scored enough runs to avoid a 3-1 loss, that would have been a league-leading fourth complete game for Wright. But his performance still kept Boston’s bad rotation ERA of 4.49 from getting worse.

Wright’s own ERA, meanwhile, is now the best in the American League by a comfortable margin:

1. Steven Wright: 2.01
2. Danny Salazar: 2.23

If this feels familiar, that’s because it sort of is. As the folks at Inside Edge noted, Wright’s start to 2016 closely resembles that of the last knuckleballer to win a Cy Young:

Mind you, Wright’s knuckler is not an exact replica of the one R.A. Dickey had in 2012. It was known for velocity that sat in the high 70s and could climb higher. Wright’s knuckleball is more of a traditional floater, sitting in the low- to mid-70s and occasionally going slower.

Likewise, Wright’s results are not identical to those Dickey had at the same point in 2012. Wright boasts inferior walk and strikeout rates, meaning he’s needed more good fortune on balls in play. Because his .246 batting average on balls in play is well below the major league average of .295, a certain set of eyes could see him as a prime candidate for regression.

Another set of eyes, however, sees Wright as a guy whose knuckleball won’t get any easier to hit.

To a couple of extents, Wright’s knuckleball has been harder to hit than the one Dickey had in 2012. Per Brooks Baseball, the 31-year-old is holding opposing batters to just a .210 average and a .275 slugging percentage with his knuckleball. Both are better than what Dickey’s knuckleball did to opposing batters (.219 AVG, .348 SLUG) in 2012. 

That this is happening despite the fact that Wright has had more balls put in play suggests either a great amount of luck or a great amount of soft contact. Today’s fancy-pants stats point toward the latter.

According to Baseball Savant, Wright’s batted balls average 87.5 miles per hour. That is safely below the MLB average of 89.2 miles per hour and close to the average exit velocity boasted by Jake Arrieta (87.2), who’s otherwise known as the Contact Management Supreme Leader.

Courtesy of Daren Willman, MLB.com’s director of baseball research and development, we know lower exit velocities tend to lead to more outs. This leads to a classic “Well, duh!” conclusion: If hitters want to do better against Wright, they should hit his knuckleball harder.

But, yeah. This will be easier said than done.

As Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs noted a few weeks ago, Wright gets a good chunk of his contact on pitches outside the strike zone. That’s still true, as he has one of the AL’s highest out-of-zone contact rates at 70.7 percent (No. 11).

Regarding Wright’s exit velocity, prior to Monday, that’s had exactly the kind of effect that league-wide figures suggest it would:

Knowing this, the obvious advice to give hitters is that they not go fishing when Wright’s knuckleballs dance outside the strike zone. But that would essentially be asking them to do better at anticipating the movement of his knucklers. That’s like asking party-goers to anticipate where Bill Murray will show up next.

What looks a lot flukier is the .229 BABIP Wright is holding hitters to on pitches inside the strike zone. That’s far below the MLB average of .314, and therefore suspect.

But though that figure probably will come up, it may not be very far. Wright’s exit velocity on in-zone pitches is 90.0 mph, which is below the average of 91.8. His BABIP may be a little too low, but he is earning his better-than-average BABIP on his in-zone pitches.

Besides which, hitters have to put Wright’s in-zone pitches in play to raise his in-zone BABIP. That might be the biggest challenge of all. Among all qualified AL pitchers, nobody has a lower rate of contact in the strike zone than Wright’s mark of 76.8 percent. Even when his pitches are good to hit, they’re not so easy to target. 

That’s because Wright’s knuckleball can do things like this:

As well as things like this:

It’s hard to describe in words what makes a knuckleball good. Images like these are a reminder that a good knuckleball is something that can really only be seen. And when Wright pitches, you’re going to see a lot of good knuckleballs.

And not just you, for that matter.

“Oh, my God, the hitters, the umpires—all of them, every game,” Red Sox catcher Ryan Hanigan said of the reactions he hears to Wright’s knuckleball, via Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald. “It’s unbelievable the stuff you hear.”

This offers a fair bit of hope that Wright’s knuckleball won’t go the way of Dickey’s, which hasn’t been the same since it started leaking velocity after 2012. Wright’s dominance is based not on velocity, but on good, ol‘ fashioned ball-on-silly-string movement.

The Red Sox don’t have to call Wright their best ace. He’s new to this whole dominance thing. Price, on the other hand, has been playing the part for the better part of a decade now. And with a 2.47 ERA over his last eight outings, he’s playing the part again now after a slow start.

But the way he’s going, Wright is at least a co-ace alongside Price. And with his knuckleball, he should be able to keep that label.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

One year, one hip surgery, six-and-a-half months on the open market and three minor league starts since the last time he toed a major league mound, Tim Lincecum sent a message Saturday:

The Freak lives.

The Los Angeles Angels signed Lincecum last month hoping the veteran right-hander could be a pick-me-up for their injury-battered starting rotation. He was just that in his debut Saturday afternoon at the Oakland Coliseum. The former San Francisco Giants ace spear-headed a 7-1 win over the A’s with six innings of one-run ball, in which he allowed only four hits with two walks and two strikeouts.

After so many years of watching Lincecum in orange and black on the other side of the bay, it was a bit weird to see him mowing down hitters while garbed all in red. Unless you ask him, of course.

“I don’t think it looks weird,” said the 32-year-old of his new threads after the game, via Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area. “I think it looks pretty good.”

At any rate, maybe the best thing to be said about Lincecum’s debut is it was often easy to forget he was even pitching. Whereas the A’s cycled through seven pitchers in the process of giving up seven runs—one of which came on a long home run off the bat of Mike Trout—Lincecum put in a quiet, workman-like performance light on drama.

At the least, this is a good first impression for a guy the Angels are hoping can be a $2 million steal. At best, it’s the start of a renaissance in which Lincecum will more closely resemble his 2008-2011 self than his 2012-2015 self.

In case anyone needs a refresher on how the two compare, here are the numbers:

The first four full seasons of Lincecum’s career netted him two National League Cy Youngs and cemented him as one of the best pitchers in baseball. After that, he turned into one of the worst pitchers in baseball.

The primary culprit for Lincecum’s collapse is the velocity he lost. After sitting in the low- to mid-90s with his fastball earlier in his career, he sat around 90 between 2012 and 2014 and then in the high 80s last season. By the time he made his last start for the Giants on June 27 last year, there wasn’t much hope his velocity would bounce back.

Which brings us to the good news.

There were reports of Lincecum showing improved velocity when he held a showcase for prospective buyers in early May. It turns out that wasn’t a one-time thing. According to Brooks Baseball, Lincecum’s release speed with his four-seamer and sinker sat in the 89-90 range Saturday. That’s up from the 88-89 range he occupied last season. He also sprinkled in some 90s and 91s to boot.

That may not be vintage velocity, but at least it’s better velocity. It’s also velocity he’s comfortable with.

“I’m not going to be the guy throwing 93, 94, 95 [mph] anymore,” he said ahead of Saturday’s start, via Mark Chiarelli of MLB.com. “I have to spot my fastball and trust the movement. I think that’s where I’m at, trusting I can get outs with 88-92.”

To the naked eye, Lincecum’s fastball command wasn’t terrible Saturday. He did an especially good job of staying out of the sweet spot against Oakland’s left-handed batters, and his mistakes were mostly good (read: non-hittable) mistakes.

Meanwhile, Lincecum’s money pitch did its job. No pitch has done more damage in his career than his changeup, and ESPN Stats and Information can vouch it was out in force against the A’s:

Lest anyone get too excited, however, Lincecum’s debut offers some nits to pick.

Although his fastball command wasn’t terrible, it’s hard to say it was good. Fastballs that hit their marks and fastballs that missed their marks were probably in equal supply, particularly in a third inning in which he allowed two hits, walked a guy and hit another guy.

In light of this, it’s not surprising only 60.2 percent (59 of 98) of Lincecum’s pitches went for strikes. In relation to his average of 61.8 percent between 2012 and 2015, that’s not a great sign.

It didn’t help that Lincecum got swings and misses on only seven of 98 pitches. That’s 7.1 percent, well below his career rate of 11.0. Between that and his spotty command, he wasn’t harder to hit than his two strikeouts would indicate.

As such, there’s no escaping the notion that Lincecum’s effectiveness Saturday might have had something to do with the opposition. He was facing an A’s team that entered the day ranked 13th in the American League in runs and OPS. Overcoming them isn’t the best litmus test.

Still, the Angels’ 30-38 record puts them in a position to take whatever positive signs they can get. Lincecum’s improved velocity and good-as-ever changeup will do nicely. And even if his fastball command doesn’t get better, he might get by as long as he continues to avoid making bad mistakes.

If Lincecum continues to pitch well, the interesting question is how it will benefit the Angels. If everything comes together just right, he may help them mount a charge up the AL West standings. If that fails, though, he could be a useful piece of trade bait come late July.

This remains to be seen. All we know for now is that we’ve seen Lincecum’s first start in an Angels uniform, and it was good enough to warrant more. Maybe he’s no longer the Freak of old, but he’s not done yet simply being the Freak.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The most productive starting pitcher in the American League‘s best rotation came close to making history Thursday. As a general concept, that sounds like something that would happen.

But, Colby Lewis? Texas Rangers? That’s unexpected and therefore a cool story.

With a 3.00 ERA through 13 starts, Lewis was already having a good season when he took the hill to face the Oakland A’s at the Oakland Coliseum. He made it better by taking a perfect game into the eighth inning and a no-hitter into the ninth inning.

Alas, a four-pitch walk to Yonder Alonso snapped Lewis’ perfect-game bid. And leading off the ninth, Max Muncy nixed the no-no with a double that Nomar Mazara missed by thaaaaaaat much:

“I thought he was going to get to it a lot easier,” Lewis said afterward, per the Associated Press (via ESPN.com). “It is what it is. You can’t throw your arms up in the air and get all mad about it. You have to go back to work.”

He did just that. Lewis also lost his shutout after losing his no-hitter—allowing an RBI double to Coco Crisp that was also nearly caught—but finished things off to seal a 5-1 win.

With his first complete game of 2016, the 36-year-old right-hander lowered his ERA to 2.81. That’s the best in a Rangers rotation that now leads the American League in ERA at 3.52. Coming on the heels of a 2015 season in which the Rangers’ rotation had one of the five worst ERAs in the AL, that’s surprising enough. And indeed, nobody’s ever said it’s easy to pitch at Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas.

But more so than what the Rangers rotation as a whole is doing, it’s what Lewis is doing that boggles the mind.

It would be easy to explain it if Cole Hamels (whose 3.14 ERA is none too shabby, granted) was Texas’ best starter. He throws strikes with a low-90s fastball, and he can still make hitters look foolish with a changeup that ranks among the best ever. Like a lot of guys these days, he’s a strikeout pitcher.

It would also be easy to explain it if Yu Darvish were Texas’ best starter. His health has only allowed him to make three starts this season, but he proved in those he still has great velocity and a slider that may be as nasty as Hamels’ changeup. He’s also a strikeout pitcher.

Heck, it would even be easy to explain it if Martin Perez were Texas’ best starter. He can’t contend with Hamels or Darvish in terms of raw stuff, but his sinker gets approximately all of the ground balls.

Lewis, on the other hand, excels at neither missing bats nor at managing contact. As you’d expect from a guy with his age and his injury track record—he’s had shoulder, elbow and hip surgeries—his fastball hovers in the high 80s. Also, it’s doubtful his slider, curveball or changeup will ever be among the GIFs featured at PitcherList.com. 

This makes Lewis a hard guy to sum up on paper. He’s one of those guys you just have to, you know, watch.

That’s the only way to understand it’s not about what Lewis throws but rather how he throws what he throws. He’ll work both sides of the strike zone with a four-seam fastball and a sinker. He’ll also pitch backward, using his secondaries to get ahead before going to the heat. In general, the eye test says he’s good at sequencing his pitches.

This is the long way of saying the obvious: Lewis just plain knows how to pitch. Most days, that makes him a solid innings-eater. On a good day, it apparently make him damn near unhittable.

To echo the thoughts of CBS Sports’ Dayn Perry, however, the sustainability of Lewis’ current performance is a question mark. Maybe even a big question mark.

There are metrics that suggest Lewis is lucky to have his 2.81 ERA. The most basic is fielding independent pitching, which has Lewis rated as one of the luckiest pitchers in the American League.

That Lewis is walking only 1.7 batters per nine innings means he has one valuable skill, to be sure. But he’s only striking out 5.6 batters per nine innings despite all those strikes. Because of that, he needs good fortune on balls in play.

The best way to earn that is to induce soft contact. Lewis isn’t doing that. He entered Thursday with a 37.9 hard-hit rate, way above his career average of 31.7. According to Baseball Savant, his average exit velocity was 89.0 miles per hour. That’s basically the league average.

The number it all points to is .234. That’s Lewis’ batting average on balls in play. That’s far below his career norm of .297 and therefore likely due for a major regression.

That’s one reason nobody should be shocked if Lewis comes back to earth. Besides that, well, this is also the same guy who put up a 4.90 ERA across 2014 and 2015.

But the damage Lewis has already done should still make a difference in the end. He’s played an important role in establishing the Rangers’ six-and-a-half-game lead in the AL West, not to mention their three-game lead over everyone else for the top record in the American League. Even if they never get better, the Rangers should find themselves playing in October.

And even if Lewis is no longer their best pitcher by then, the Rangers will still be glad to have him.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Between the fans, the players and the managers, quite a few minds will go into selecting the rosters for this year’s MLB All-Star Game.

Let’s guess their intentions, shall we?

The 2016 Midsummer Classic—to be hosted by San Diego’s Petco Park—is still about a month away. But we now have a picture of which players are having good seasons. And thanks to weekly updates on the American League and National League voting, we also have a good idea who the fans want to see in the starting lineups July 12.

Predicting the final 34-man rosters for the AL and NL teams, however, doesn’t just mean anticipating which players will be voted in by the fans. It also requires anticipating who the players and the AL and NL managers (Ned Yost and Terry Collins, respectively) favor for the rosters. There’s the final vote to take into account as well.

It’s a lot to consider—read on when you’re ready.

Begin Slideshow

You can already imagine it on a shelf at your local book store: Better Late Than Never: The Jurickson Profar Story.

The last time I wrote about Profar was in late December, when the topic at hand was whether the Texas Rangers might find a team willing to trade for him as a reclamation project. The young shortstop was a former top prospect, sure, but at that point he was also:

• A player with disappointing results in the majors.
• A player coming off two consecutive lost years due to right shoulder problems.
• A player who had no clear fit on the Rangers’ major league roster.

A trade was never likely, though, for reasons that Rangers general manager Jon Daniels was upfront about in a recent interview.

“Our feeling was, we’ve invested a lot of time in getting him healthy, so let’s see what we have,” Daniels told Jorge L. Ortiz of USA Today. “Teams are looking at him like, ‘We have a chance to get a really good player at a discount.’ It didn’t make sense for us.”

Flash-forward a few months, and the payoff from the Rangers’ roll of the dice on Profar is one reason among many they have the American League‘s best record.

After starting 2016 with a strong showing at Triple-A Round Rock, the 23-year-old out of Curacao is hitting .343 and pitching in all over the diamond through 17 major league games. In so doing, he’s looked a lot like the player everyone said he would be one day.

You don’t need to take your DeLorean that far back in time to find when Profar was everyone’s favorite prospect. He was the No. 1 prospect in baseball going into 2013 for Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus, with the consensus being that he was as complete a prospect as anyone could hope for.

Of his bat, BP’s Jason Parks praised the switch-hitting Profar for a “preternatural bat-to-ball ability” as well as “excellent pitch recognition skills/strike zone judgment.” None of this rang true, as Profar hit just .231 through his first 94 major league games. But in 2016, we can say, “Ah, there it is.”

Profar’s 16.4 strikeout percentage is safely below the major league average of 21.2 percent. He entered Monday with just one hit against four breaking balls, according to Brooks Baseball, but he was hitting .333 against fastballs and .429 against off-speed.

From the left side of the plate, where he’s logged most of his at-bats, Profar has also shown an ability to hit pitches on both the inside and outside part of the strike zone:

Mind you, one obvious elephant in the room is the small sample size. And there are two more.

The fact that Profar only has a .370 on-base percentage to go with his .343 batting average highlights that he’s been more aggressive than advertised. That’s making him reliant on batting average on balls in play, and there’s visual evidence (here, here and here) that his .393 BABIP is too good to be true.

A regression may only go so far, however. Profar’s batted ball profile reveals he’s not suppressing his BABIP by hitting a bunch of balls in the air and also that he’s making good use of the whole field. And as Baseball Savant can show, his exit velocity is on the up and up:

If Profar continues on this path, the extra hard contact will only help him maintain a high BABIP. With only two home runs to his name now, it would also lead to more power. That was something else he was supposed to have, as some used to see him as a potential double-digit home run hitter.

In the meantime, all Profar has to do on the other side of the ball is keep doing what he’s been doing.

Baseball America once described Profar as an “electrifying” defender due to his combination of soft hands, wide range and strong arm. With Elvis Andrus at shortstop and Rougned Odor at second base, how the Rangers would find a home for these talents was a good question at the start of the year. 

Their solution, as it turns out, has been to find multiple homes for Profar’s talents. He’s spelled Odor at second, Adrian Beltre at third and even Mitch Moreland at first. And though the defensive metrics claim Profar’s defense has been merely passable, the video tells a different story.

For instance, here’s Profar the second baseman ranging into the hole to rob Francisco Lindor:

And here’s Profar the first baseman making the kind of stretch that few first basemen/regular humans are capable of:

The fact that Profar has been able to do good work with the glove despite not playing a single inning at shortstop is a good sign for the Rangers. It shows he has the talent to expand his horizons beyond his natural position, which is something he may need to keep doing if he wants to stay in the lineup.

With Moreland and Prince Fielder both having poor seasons, it’s conceivable Profar could be used as an everyday first baseman. And to borrow an idea from Cliff Corcoran of Sports Illustrated, Profar logging some time in the outfield could prepare him to fill Ian Desmond’s shoes in center field if free agency takes him elsewhere this winter.

That’s presumably not what the Rangers had in mind when Profar had the look of a future superstar at shortstop a few years ago, but that does not matter in the grand scheme of things. Regardless of his position, they had every reason to hope that Profar would one day be an impact player on both sides of the ball. It took some patience, but he’s finally showing them he can be just that.

Basically, Better Late Than Never: The Jurickson Profar Story. Reserve your copy today.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

According to the best measure we have, the top power hitter in Major League Baseball in 2016 is David Ortiz. That’s not too surprising. Although he’s 40 years old, he’s still David Ortiz.

But the best power hitter in baseball after him? Adam Duvall. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

It’s true, though. The Cincinnati Reds‘ left fielder was as anonymous as any major league player coming into the year, but that is indeed him behind Big Papi at the top of the isolated power (slugging percentage that ignores singles) leaderboard:

1. David Ortiz: .368
2. Adam Duvall: .330

Duvall’s 18 home runs also make him one of the top five home run hitters in the sport. He maintained his position in that club by helping the Reds to a 9-8 win over the Atlanta Braves Monday night with a long two-run blast in the first inning. Here, look upon the clobberage with your own eyes:

Non-Reds fans may have only three questions right now. One is “Who?” The next is “Seriously, who?” And the last is “How?”

The first two are easy enough to answer. The 27-year-old Duvall is a Kentucky native who went to Louisville and was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 11th round of the 2010 draft. He debuted in the majors in June 2014 and came to the Reds in the Mike Leake trade last July. He entered this year with 55 major league games under his belt, in which he’d hit .204 with eight home runs.

That last part is obviously where the other question comes into play, but Duvall’s rise to (literal and figurative) power is less impossible and more just improbable.

With just a .259 average and a .288 OBP to his name, Duvall hasn’t managed much consistency to go with his power. That’s not a fluke. He has an aggressive approach that’s led to a whole lot of strikeouts and not many walks, which is consistent with how he’s performed for the bulk of his pro career.

But as the Baseball America book on him following the 2014 season stated, “Duvall’s calling card is his plus power.” He flirted with 30 homers in the minors in 2012, 2014 and 2015. Each time, those dingers were the saving grace of good-not-great slash lines.

So, what we’re seeing now isn’t a completely new version of Duvall. It’s more like the ideal version of Duvall.

When something like this happens, things tend to trace back to a tangible root cause, such as a different setup (Daniel Murphy) or an entirely new swing (J.D. Martinez). But nothing like that stands out for Duvall, whose adjustments have happened exclusively between his ears.

Duvall recently spoke of a “mental adjustment” in talking to John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that, he offered specific clues to Manny Randhawa of Sports on Earth. After coming out of the gate this season “trying to inside-out a lot of stuff,” he got back to being a little more of himself.

“But then I started to try to really drive the ball into the center of the field, and it helped,” he said. “I was able to get the contact point a little bit further out.”

The right-handed swinger’s batted ball profile doesn’t read like one from a guy who’s trying to inside-out pitches. In fact, it reads like one from a guy who has never cared less about doing that:

Duvall’s opposite-field rate is comfortably at a new low, allowing for more balls to center and the left of center. The traditional term for a hitter like this is “dead-pull hitter.”

This is an approach that can backfire if a hitter tries to pull literally everything thrown his way. Generally, pitches on the inner half of the plate are good for pulling. Anything beyond that is dicey, so it’s good for dead-pull hitters to pick their battles.

Duvall is doing that. Courtesy of Brooks Baseball, here are his pre-2016 swing rates:

Compared to his 2016 swing rates:

There’s probably an equal amount of red in both pictures, but it’s noticeably shifted more to the inside in the second picture. Duvall has been hacking at exactly the kind of pitches that a hitter like him should be hacking at.

This approach has produced not just a steady stream of balls to center and left, but also a fly-ball rate north of 40 percent and, entering Monday, a career-best 47.6 hard-hit rate on fly balls. Add all that up, and you get a regular dose of loud sounds like this one:

Of course, any skepticism about Duvall’s power outburst remaining this impressive is warranted.

It’s hard to imagine him staying on his 40-homer pace no matter what happens. But if pitchers start throwing to Duvall the way they should, it’s even harder to imagine. They should be attacking him away, away and away. And according to Baseball Savant, that means reversing what’s so far been a career-low rate of away pitches against him.

But regardless of what pitchers do against Duvall, his power outburst should have some degree of durability. His raw pop isn’t going anywhere. In all likelihood, neither are his regular at-bats at dinger-friendly Great American Ball Park. And though pitchers can avoid his danger zones, that doesn’t mean the man himself has to change them.

Because while he might not yet be established as one of the best, Duvall is now certainly a professional slugger.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

There are two guys in the NL Central having great bounce-back seasons but whose efforts are being wasted on clubs that are about as bad as everyone expected them to be.

It sounds like these two guys would be better off in greener pastures. And before long, the summer trade market could make it happen.

Provided you know how to read a headline, you’ve already figured out I’m talking about Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun and Cincinnati Reds right fielder Jay Bruce. They’re looming large on the ol‘ radar after combining for three home runs Saturday. Braun clubbed two in a 7-4 win over the New York Mets at Miller Park, and Bruce sent one into orbit in a 2-1 victory over the Oakland A’s at Great American Ball Park.

It is that dinger to which we shall turn our attention:

Ooh. Ahh. Whoa. Et cetera.

Braun’s 10th and 11th home runs of 2016 snapped him out of a mini-funk and upped his batting average to .316 and his OPS to .919. After hitting just .275 with an .815 OPS over the last two seasons, the 32-year-old is “back” like Matthew McConaughey circa 2014.

Bruce is enjoying a renaissance of his own. His 14th home run of 2016 upped his average to .276 and his OPS to .911. For a guy who hit just .222 with a .695 OPS over the last two campaigns, the 29-year-old’s comeback is one that no lame reference to an actor can properly capture.

With the Brewers and the Reds stuck in full-on rebuilding mode as they languish many games behind the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central, the only question is how long it will be before their clubs move Braun and/or Bruce. The best answer appears to be “soon.”

Jeff Todd of MLB Trade Rumors has already rated Braun and Bruce among the league’s top 10 summer trade candidates, and Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe has heard rumblings about both. Braun is the “hot name out there,” an NL scout told Cafardo. The Reds are “open for business and Bruce is available.”

Braun and Bruce both have no-trade protection in their contracts. The former can block trades to all but five clubs. The latter can block trades to eight clubs. But Bruce’s contract is less of a hurdle for prospective buyers. Braun is still owed $80 million over four years after 2016. Bruce is owed $12.5 million this year, after which his club can either pick up a $13 million option or pay a $1 million buyout.

That not only equates to less money for the Reds and a buyer to haggle over, but it means fewer questions for buyers to ask regarding whether Bruce can keep up his hot hitting. And as it is, his hot hitting is believable enough.

Bruce never recovered from the left-knee woes he experienced in 2014, and the knee seemed to dog him in 2015 too. As August Fagerstrom of FanGraphs wrote, the most noticeable problem was Bruce’s opposite-field power, or lack thereof.

But this year, it’s made a nice comeback. As of Saturday morning, Bruce’s recent opposite-field slugging percentages lined up like this:

• 2014: .313
• 2015: .374
• 2016: .615

Bruce has been clobbering the ball in general this year. His overall hard-hit rate was 38.7 percent entering Saturday, well ahead of his career rate of 34.5 percent. So despite some less than awesome defensive metrics, he’s looking a lot like the feared slugger he was between 2010 and 2013.

Braun, meanwhile, comes with more baggage. Prospective buyers not only have to square themselves with his contract, but with his recent thumb and back woes. Also, nobody’s forgetting his performance-enhancing drug drama.

But as rival evaluators told Buster Olney of ESPN.com last month, Braun’s 2016 season has “altered the perception of him as a player you wouldn’t touch because of his age and PED history into someone worth considering.” At least in part, this would seem to be thanks to his return to good health.

“Swing is in a good place, bat path is in a good place,” Braun said in April, via Genaro C. Armas of the Associated Press. “But more than that, I’m healthy, healthiest I’ve been in a while. I feel good.”

We’ll have to take Braun’s word for it that he’s feeling healthy for the first time in a while, but there’s no need to take his word for it on his swing. After struggling mightily in 2014 and 2015, he’s not chasing (O-Swing percent), whiffing (SwStr percent) or striking out (K percent) as much in 2016:

One thing to be skeptical about is the rate at which Braun is putting balls on the ground, as his 54.4 GB percent is way above his career norm. The fact that he’s putting up good power numbers despite that, however, points to how he’s not wasting what he puts in the air. His hard-hit rate on fly balls is safely above his career average.

And where Bruce only has hit bat to offer, Braun can still run the bases and, depending on which metric you prefer, is playing a good left field. He’s not the same guy, but he’s at least a reflection of the person who was contending for MVPs in his heyday.

A scout Cafardo spoke to listed the Houston Astros, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies, New York Mets, San Francisco Giants and Chicago White Sox as potential buyers for Braun. Narrow that list to clubs with the financial and young talent assets needed to make music, and the Astros, Red Sox and Phillies make a fair bit of sense.

Per Cafardo, teams that could be interested in Bruce are the Phillies, Cardinals and Mets, plus the Kansas City Royals. KC’s subpar right field production and long list of injuries give it incentive to go after Bruce. But it should watch out for the Cleveland Indians, a fellow AL Central contender that could be a sleeper in the Bruce sweepstakes.

With Braun and Bruce looking like their better selves on teams that have virtually no reasons to keep them, everything is there for the trade winds to start blowing.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Contract info courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Exactly 1,216 picks later, the 2016 Major League Baseball draft is over. We’ll know how everyone made out in, oh, five years or so.

But while we could wait patiently until then, here’s a better idea: Let’s rush to judgment!

With choices ranging from pro and college teams to individual players to an entire league, we’re going to look at the five biggest winners and losers from this year’s draft. The analysis within is mostly tied to what went down on Day 1 of the draft Thursday, as those are the picks that matter most. It also pulls from expert opinions, scouting reports and farm-system rankings.

We’re basically here to say either “Great job, man!” or “Gee, I don’t know, man.”

Read on when ready.

Begin Slideshow

What Alex Rodriguez was for the 2015 New York Yankees, CC Sabathia has been for the 2016 New York Yankees.

That is to say: seemingly against all odds, a hugely productive player. 

Because the 35-year-old left-hander entered the year fresh out of rehab and with three straight bad seasons and a balky right knee to overcome, there was really no telling what the Yankees were going to get out of him. But 10 starts in, there’s Sabathia with a 2.28 ERA.

He led the Yankees to their fifth straight win with his latest effort, firing seven shutout innings in a 4-0 victory over the Detroit Tigers at Yankee Stadium on Friday night. To the highlights!

At the moment, Sabathia’s ERA ranks 10th best among major league starters who’ve logged at least 50 innings. According to Jeff Quagliata, the research manager for the YES Network, it’s also the best ERA he’s ever had through 10 starts.

Perhaps even more impressive is this:

Considering that we’re talking about a former Cy Young winner who was arguably the best left-hander in the sport for a while there, this is saying something.

You can be forgiven if your only reaction to Sabathia’s current dominance is utter shock, complete with a stupefied and/or dumbfounded look on your face. Although he was one of the best pitchers in baseball once, that was before he put up a 4.81 ERA between 2013 and 2015. In the meantime, his physical health and personal well-being fell apart along with his numbers.

But in 2016, Sabathia does indeed look like a new man. And a new pitcher, for that matter.

Sabathia’s decision to go into a rehabilitation program for alcohol abuse last October caught everyone off-guard. But by all accounts, it was both totally necessary and totally worth it.

Sabathia communicated openly to the New York Post’s George A. King III in spring training about how good he was feeling and expounded when he wrote in The Players’ Tribune: “[Now] that I’m on the other side of things, I feel at peace. I feel good about myself. I feel good about my body. And I’m really looking forward to coming into this season with a new frame of mind.”

Sabathia also came into the season with a new way to keep his right knee from being a pain in the, well, knee. He committed to wearing a knee brace, and is apparently benefiting from it.

“I think his knee has not been an issue because of the brace,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi told Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal, “and I think it’s changed who he is.”

However, just because Sabathia is better off in mind and body doesn’t mean he’s the same pitcher he used to be. The power fastball he once had is still long gone. Going into Friday’s start, FanGraphs had his average fastball velocity at just 88.2 miles per hour, six miles per hour slower than his peak of 94.7. In a related story, his strikeout rate is still well below his peak levels at 7.5 per nine innings.

But who needs velocity when you have movement? As Brooks Baseball can show, Sabathia has scrapped his straight four-seam fastball in favor of more sinkers and a lot more cutters:

Adding a cutter to his repertoire is something Sabathia toyed with back in 2014, when he was trying to learn the pitch from Andy Pettitte. But this time, he turned to Mariano Rivera.

“Just talked about how he throws it, seeing what I could pick up from him,” Sabathia said this spring, per Brendan Kuty of NJ.com. “His was the best one ever.”

Whatever Mo taught him, it’s working. Sabathia’s new cutter can be glimpsed at the 0:20 mark in the above highlight reel, which shows its late glove-side action. And entering Friday, it was holding right-handed batters to a .210 average. They’d also managed only four extra-base hits against it.

In general, hard-hit balls have been tough to come by against Sabathia. According to Baseball Savant, he entered Friday with an average exit velocity of just 85.7 miles per hour. He was also limiting hard contact with the best of ’em:

1. Tanner Roark: 20.5 Hard%
2. Scott Kazmir: 21.9 Hard%
3. Jake Arrieta: 21.9 Hard%
4. CC Sabathia: 23.0 Hard%

As such, going for a movement-first approach has allowed Sabathia to become the kind of pitcher he needed to become once his strikeout rate started going the way of his velocity. That was a wake-up call for him to learn how to pitch to contact, and he’s finally done it.

Of course, pitching to contact effectively also usually requires good luck. Sabathia’s .275 batting average on balls in play suggests he’s gotten more than his fair share of that. As noted by Corinne Landrey at FanGraphs, he’s also been a bit too good at keeping fly balls in the park. Once these two things regress, his ERA will take a hike.

Nonetheless, the 2.28 ERA Sabathia has now feels awfully reminiscent of the .842 OPS and 33 dingers the Yankees got out of A-Rod in 2015, following his year-long suspension in 2014. It’s production that can be nitpicked, but it’s also production that can’t be ignored and can certainly be enjoyed.

Sabathia is allowing the Yankees to say hello to an old friend they probably thought they’d never see again. They should be (and presumably are) savoring every second of it.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The AL East-leading Baltimore Orioles have a formula for winning games, and they’re sticking to it.

This is thanks in no small part to Mark Trumbo, who just won’t stop dropping Trumbombs.

Trumbo entered Monday’s contest against the Kansas City Royals with 18 home runs, tied with Todd Frazier for the MLB lead. The blast that he cranked leading off the bottom of the seventh inning leapfrogged him ahead of Frazier and, oh yeah, tied a game the Orioles went on to win 4-1.

All rise for loud noises and the sight of a ball landing many feet from home plate:

That dinger was one of Trumbo‘s two hits, upping his average to .295 and his OPS to .953. It also put him just three shy of matching the 22 homers he hit in 142 games with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners last year. And if he stays on this pace, ESPN.com calculates he’ll finish with 55 homers. That would top his previous career best by 21.

In good, old-fashioned plain English: The 30-year-old slugger seems to have turned a corner.

“A lot of guys 28 to 32 start figuring out some things,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter told Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times recently. “You have to be careful about writing them off and saying, ‘This is who they are going to be.’ Guys like Mark, they keep learning, they keeping taking in new things.”

At first, it might not seem like Trumbo has actually learned anything. With a strikeout rate of 26.8 percent that’s par for the course, he’s still struggling to subdue his biggest flaw. Likewise, he’s still not drawing many walks. To wit, his power still looks like his only redeeming quality on offense. 

But when a hitter is maximizing power the way Trumbo is maximizing his, that’s OK.

It may not look like it based on his walk and strikeout rates, but one thing Trumbo is doing in 2016 is making better choices with his swings. Entering Monday, he was chasing pitches outside the zone at a career-low 32.4 percent clip. Likewise, his swing rate on pitches inside the zone was 71.8 percent, just a hair down from last year’s career high of 72.2.

When Trumbo has made contact, it’s been the kind of contact he wants: in the air and loud. He entered Monday with a ground ball-to-fly ball ratio of 0.86, a career low by plenty. And according to Statcast data at Baseball Savant, the top of the exit velocity leaderboard looked like this:

Last month, Kevin Ruprecht of SB Nation offered a comprehensive breakdown of exactly what Trumbo is doing differently in 2016. Arguably most important is how he’s being more selective with low pitches, perhaps due to his latest experimentation with his timing mechanism.

If that’s the case, be warned this isn’t guaranteed to last forever. Trumbo has gotten results out of a timing adjustment before, only to have those results vanish over the long haul. And in general, he’s been a fast starter and a slow finisher throughout his career.

If Trumbo can keep this up, however, he’ll be doing his part to maintain the Orioles’ preferred offensive weapon. 

The point that the Orioles like hitting home runs won’t be breaking news to anyone who’s noticed them club over 200 homers in each of the last four seasons. Even still, it’s newsworthy that they’re going especially silly with dingers in 2016. With 83 through 56 games, they’re on pace for about 240. In franchise history, only the 1996 Orioles have done better than that.

Home runs aren’t the only recent strength the Orioles are taking to an extreme in 2016. They had excellent bullpens in 2012, 2014 and 2015, but even “excellent” doesn’t do their current bullpen justice. Its 2.73 ERA is the best the Orioles have enjoyed in the last five seasons. This year, it ranks second in MLB behind only the Royals.

To boot, Baltimore’s two big strengths have been playing in concert with one another. After Matt Wieters and Manny Machado also went deep Monday, the Orioles now have an MLB-high 31 home runs in innings seven through nine. Those have set opponents up, and the bullpen has knocked ’em down.

For now, this dynamic is allowing the Orioles to hide their lousy starting pitching. In the long run, though, even the man in charge seems hesitant to trust its sustainability.

“It’s not easy,” Showalter said of scoring off opposing bullpens, via Brittany Ghiroli and Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com. “Over the course of the season, if you’re not getting runs, off of those guys you are not going to like the results. So, we’ve been fortunate. It’s not something you like to depend on, getting runs off those guys.”

However, if guys like Wieters, Adam Jones and Pedro Alvarez add even more power to the pile, the Orioles may not need to rely as much on home runs of the heroic variety. That, plus continued domination from their bullpen, would allow the Orioles to keep hiding their lackluster starting pitching.

It was obvious at the outset of 2016 that the Orioles were designed on paper to win games with lots of dingers and an outstanding bullpen. The worry was how well their design would actually come together on the field, as there were questions abound.

With Trumbo obliterating baseballs better than ever, one of those questions has gotten a resounding answer. Others have gotten satisfying answers. And together, it all adds up to a team that doesn’t seem interested in straying far from the top of the AL East.

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

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com