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With a 12-18 record since the calendar turned to May, the Chicago White Sox are in need of answers.

What they’ve found instead is James Shields.

A trade sending the veteran right-hander from the San Diego Padres to the south side of Chicago that had been circling the rumor mill has come to fruition. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman was first to report Saturday on an agreement that is now a done deal:

“We’re pleased to add a starter of James Shields’ caliber to our starting rotation,” White Sox general manager Rick Hahn said, per Scott Merkin of MLB.com. “We believe this move makes the entire pitching staff stronger, and the club certainly benefits from his addition, in terms of pitching depth and quality.”

There’s still the question of how the two clubs are splitting the remainder of Shields’ big-money contract. Although nothing is official yet, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reports the Padres and White Sox are basically splitting it down the middle:

Without even a hint of doubt, the biggest winner of this deal is Shields. At 29-26 coming into Saturday, the White Sox are still contenders in the AL Central even despite their recent struggles. In joining them, Shields is escaping a Padres team headed by a guy who just threw him under the bus.

“To have a starter like Shields perform as poorly as he did yesterday is an embarrassment to the team, an embarrassment to him,” Padres chairman Ron Fowler said in a radio interview after the Seattle Mariners shelled Shields for 10 earned runs Tuesday, per Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports.

Fowler also referred to his whole team as “miserable failures.” At 22-34 and in last place in the NL West, he at least has that part right.

For their part, the fact they’re keeping shortstop Tim Anderson, right-hander Carson Fulmer and their other top prospects while only paying half of Shields’ remaining contract means the White Sox aren’t risking much in this deal. Which is a good thing, because the pitcher they’re getting is clearly past his prime.

With a 3.76 career ERA and nine straight 200-inning seasons under his belt, Shields still boasts impressive credentials. But the 34-year-old hit a snag with a 3.91 ERA in his first season in San Diego last year, and he is working on a 4.28 ERA through 11 starts this season.

His bomb against the Mariners didn’t help, of course. Before that, his ERA was a respectable 3.06. As Rosenthal noted, Shields was doing things to earn that.

“His ground-ball percentage is the 38th-highest out of the 103 pitchers who have thrown a minimum of one inning per team game, according to STATS LLC,” Rosenthal wrote. “His home run rate, tied for the 47th-lowest, is also better than league average.”

These were facts, and they allow for a bit of optimism about how Shields will fit in Chicago. A high ground-ball rate and a low home run rate are good things that become even better things with a good defense. Per Baseball Prospectus, the difference between the Padres and White Sox is that of a bottom-11 defense and a top-eight defense.

However, Shields’ shellacking at the hands bats of the Mariners was probably inevitable. His ratio of 2.43 strikeouts to one walk through 10 starts was a bit worse than the league average for starting pitchers in 2016. He also wasn’t especially good at inducing soft contact or limiting hard contact on balls in play:

• Shields’ First 10 GS: 15.8 Soft%, 31.0 Hard%
• 2016 MLB Starters: 19.0 Soft%, 30.9 Hard%

The two homers Shields surrendered against the Mariners upped his home run rate over the last two seasons to 1.4 per nine innings. That’s worse than the two-year average of 1.1 for starting pitchers. As Eno Sarris of FanGraphs quipped, that doesn’t bode well for a guy who is about to move from roomy Petco Park to less roomy U.S. Cellular Field:

White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper is one of the best in the business, but it won’t be easy to solve this problem.

It’s no secret that Shields’ velocity has come back down to earth after peaking between 2012 and 2014. His fastball sat in the 92-93 mph range in those three seasons, and his cutter topped out in the 89-90 mph range. In 2016, his fastball is 90-91, and his cutter is 86-87.

They say velocity isn’t everything, but Shields’ last two seasons prove it helps. As Baseball Savant can vouch, less velocity has meant higher slugging percentages against his heat:

At Shields’ age, it’s pointless to entertain the idea of his velocity being rejuvenated by his move to Chicago. It’s still going to be an Achilles’ heel. And because he’ll now be pitching half his games at U.S. Cellular Field rather than Petco Park, it could hurt him even more.

This is not to say the trade will be a complete waste for the White Sox. Shields should at least be a good innings-eater for them. Considering their bullpen has hit the skids over the last month, they could use a guy like that.

But relative to the White Sox’s biggest needs, that’s not a big fix.

Shields doesn’t figure to be the reliable No. 3 Chicago has been missing behind stud left-handers Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. He’s also not going to solve what’s ailing the offense. The White Sox rank 10th in the American League in runs scored and 14th in OPS. It’s a wonder the White Sox didn’t try to make a move for an impact bat instead of Shields.

With the Minnesota Twins (16-38) far back in the chase and the Detroit Tigers (27-28) still struggling to find their footing, the Shields trade shouldn’t result in the White Sox losing any ground in the AL Central. But with the Kansas City Royals (30-24) and Cleveland Indians (29-24) playing great baseball, it’s unlikely to help them gain ground either.

The White Sox did well to land Shields without risking much. But in this case, that doesn’t entitle them to a reward.

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

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Down goes Hunter Pence. Again.

Rest of the San Francisco Giants offense, that’s your cue to get going now.

After playing in only 52 games due to injuries in 2015, Pence has hit a major snag at the 50-game mark of his 2016 season. As reported by Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area, the veteran right fielder needs surgery to repair a torn right hamstring.

The timeline in the air for Pence’s return is eight weeks. But as Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle reports, it could be longer:

Considering the circumstances, it wouldn’t be surprising if Pence ends up missing more than eight weeks. The surgery he’s having is to repair a hamstring tendon that was torn clean off the bone when he came up lame while running to first base Wednesday in Atlanta. Good luck reading that without saying, “Ow.”

If there’s a bright side here, it’s that the Giants are arguably better suited to withstand Pence being out for a while than they were in 2015. 

Last year’s Giants had plenty of offense, but the struggles they had with their non-Madison Bumgarner pitchers rendered many of the runs they scored moot. It’s been a different story in 2016. The Giants’ Big Three of Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija has combined for a 2.35 ERA, and their starting rotation as a whole owns a 3.45 ERA that’s good for fifth in Major League Baseball.

The Giants’ much-improved pitching is the reason they are where they are. The club has responded to a slow April with a 22-9 showing since May 1. Their pitching has surrendered only 3.2 runs per game in this span, allowing for a fairly large margin of error.

This being said, Pence’s injury is indeed a threat to make that margin of error significantly smaller.

With a .298/.375/.486 batting line to his name, Pence has been San Francisco’s second-best hitter after Brandon Belt. And because the club’s offense as a whole has only a .734 OPS (eighth in the National League) despite their efforts, Belt is right on the money with his assessment of the situation:

Replacing Pence will indeed be hard. Neither Angel Pagan, who is due back from his own injury before long, nor Gregor Blanco packs a high-upside bat. Mac Williamson hasn’t fared well against major league pitching. Fellow youngster Jarrett Parker could do the trick if he picks up where he left off in an explosive 2015 debut, but that’s asking a lot. 

What the Giants can do, however, is hope to replace Pence in the aggregate.

All the key members of last year’s offense, which ranked in the NL’s top five in both runs and OPS, are back this year. The problem is that too many of them just haven’t gotten rolling yet. Just take a look at where each Giants regular is in OPS+, which adjusts OPS to be on a scale of league average (100):

After star turns in 2015, Matt Duffy and Joe Panik have been below-average hitters in 2016. Denard Span is also in that realm. Brandon Crawford has barely been above-average. And though Buster Posey has been good, he’s well short of his usual production.

These guys are largely responsible for the sputtering nature of the Giants offense this season. They’ve been able to get away with that until now, but Pence’s absence needs to be the call to arms that gets them to snap out of it and live up to their capabilities.

For Duffy and Panik, that means doing something anything to recapture what was working for them in 2015, when they spent the season whacking line drives in every direction. But for the others, it only means they need to keep doing what they’ve been doing recently:

• Span’s last 20 games: .291/.378/.405
• Crawford’s last 16 games: .291/.355/.473
• Posey’s last eight games: .267/.333/.700

Posey, in particular, could give the Giants a huge boost if he builds on his recent surge. That would mean him turning back into one of the NL’s best all-around hitters and also back into the engine in the middle of Bruce Bochy’s lineup.

“He does make us go,” the skipper said after Posey’s recent two-homer outburst at Coors Field, per John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle. “When he goes, it just relaxes everybody.”

If things don’t come together for Posey and the others, the Giants will head into the heart of the summer trade season with some decisions to make. As Jeff Todd highlighted at MLB Trade Rumors, Ryan Braun and Jay Bruce figure to be available. Josh Reddick and/or Colby Rasmus could be as well. There’s also bound to be a selection of solid platoon guys there for the taking.

But for now, the Giants have the time to see if they can solve the Pence problem in-house. Though they don’t have the guys to fill his shoes, they do have enough offensive talent to make everyone forget he’s gone.

All it needs to do is finally show up.

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

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And now for a question that’s not as absurd as it should be.

Here’s the deal: The Boston Red Sox‘s offense has been really good in 2016. It’s scored 324 runs in 54 games, an average of 6.00 per contest. At that rate, it’ll finish with 972 runs. That’s only 28 runs shy of 1,000, a mark last reached by Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome and the rest of the 1999 Cleveland Indians.

That points to a non-zero chance that the 2016 Red Sox can make a spirited run at 1,000 runs. The real question, of course, is how much higher than zero their chances go.

Well, it says a lot that this isn’t a question of whether Boston’s offense looks legit. It does. For Exhibit A, I present Mookie Betts’ five dingers in a span of seven at-bats this week:

That’s numero uno on the list of offensive highlights the Red Sox have produced, and it didn’t even come from their best hitter.

Far from it, actually. Through the lens of wRC+ (weighted runs created plus), which measures offensive value in relation to league average (100), Betts is the fifth-best of Boston’s regulars behind David Ortiz, Jackie Bradley Jr., Xander Bogaerts and Dustin Pedroia. Overall, seven regulars are performing better than average:

These seven players are driving the Red Sox’s league-leading .296 batting average, .360 on-base percentage and .494 slugging percentage. And with a collective wRC+ of 128, FanGraphs’ Owen Watson’s earlier observation that the 2016 Red Sox are outperforming the 1927 New York Yankees is holding true.

There are no Babe Ruths or Lou Gehrigs, but Boston’s lineup does feature a good mix. Ortiz, Pedroia and Hanley Ramirez are veterans with good-to-great track records. Bogaerts and Betts are former elite prospects who are now rising superstars. Bradley and Travis Shaw are less likely suspects, but they are picking up where they left off in the second half of 2015.

As Ortiz told Matt Snyder of CBS Sports:

Opponents, the way they look at it, it’s like, “Let’s take care of the big guy,” but right now, the hitting is contagious. I really believe that I’m doing well — better than ever — because everyone is doing well. You don’t have to focus on David Ortiz, everyone is doing unbelievable. The way everyone is going, that makes my life easier.

This isn’t so much an offense that can hit as it is an offense that can do everything. Looking at the key foundations of run-scoring, the Red Sox are:

• Top-15 in MLB in walk percentage
• Bottom-10 in MLB in strikeout percentage
• No. 1 in MLB in isolated power
• Top-10 in MLB in baserunning value

This is an offense that works counts, puts the ball in play, hits the ball hard and runs the bases well. If you can imagine a cross between a typical Moneyball-style Red Sox offense and the recent hit-and-run offenses of the Kansas City Royals, you get the 2016 Red Sox.

The circumstances around the Red Sox’s offense, meanwhile, are just as encouraging.

The Red Sox play half their games at Fenway Park, which ESPN.com’s park factors confirm as a good place to hit. The American League East is home to two more of those: Yankee Stadium and Rogers Centre.

Elsewhere, the league as a whole is further escaping the recent dominance of pitching. The increase in walks could be due to pressure on umpires from on high. As for the increased power, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports isn’t alone in wondering whether the ball is juiced.

All told, the overwhelming excellence of Boston’s offense doesn’t feel like a fluke. It’s a case of real talent at the right place at the right time. Hence, all the runs.

But…

Optimism about the Red Sox’s chances of scoring 1,000 runs only goes so far before snapping back to one reality: As good as they’ve been, they’re still not on pace to get there. They need to score 676 runs in their remaining 108 games to make the cut. That’s 6.26 runs per game.

Asking an offense that’s already averaging 6.00 runs per game to add an extra 0.26 runs per game may not seem like a big deal. But that comes down to which individuals can actually do better. The issue there is that the majority of Boston’s regulars are already outpacing their recent history.

Here’s a comparison of their 2016 wRC+ numbers to the previous season:

Note: “Previous” means 2015 for everyone except Christian Vazquez, who was injured all year after breaking through in 2014.

It’s true that a performance in one season isn’t terribly predictive of a performance the next season. And in the cases of Boston’s young stars—Bradley, Bogaerts, Betts and Shaw—it’s fair to wonder if their performance spikes were inevitable.

But at the same time, asking those four guys to do even better is asking a lot. It’s asking even more of Big Papi, whose age-40 season is shaping up to be the best season of his career. Pedroia is also making a run at a career-best season.

Ramirez is the one guy who stands out as a candidate to do more. He does have a career 128 wRC+, after all, and it was only three years ago that he was one of baseball’s best hitters.

If Ramirez catches fire while the hot hitters stay hot, the Red Sox could be on to something. If Vazquez, Brock Holt and/or Blake Swihart, Holt’s injury replacement, also pick it up, 1,000 runs will look less like a pie in the sky and more like a pie on a windowsill.

But this is a stretch.

Ramirez has mostly been mediocre over the last six seasons, and he’s now at an age (32) that makes it hard to count on him to snap out of it. Vazquez isn’t a regular because of his bat. Holt’s slow start is really an extended slump that dates back to last summer. Swihart has a good hit tool, but his modest power puts a natural cap on how high his offensive influence can go.

Boston’s farm system probably can’t help either. Yoan Moncada and Rafael Devers are exciting prospects, but they’ve only advanced as far as High-A Salem. Andrew Benintendi escaped Salem with a hot start but is now being humbled at Double-A Portland.

Maybe the Red Sox could trade one or two of those guys for an extra impact bat. But since it’s pitching they need most, don’t count on it.

The Red Sox still have a non-zero chance of making it to 1,000 runs. There’s a non-zero chance of literally anything happening in baseball, and this is indeed an offense worthy of the pursuit.

What’s more likely, though, is that this offense trends in the opposite direction. A whole bunch of guys all having career years at once is a cool thing to watch but a hard thing to sustain.

Still, at least the Red Sox gave us an excuse to have this conversation. It may be absurd, but it’s also pretty cool.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked and are current through Wednesday, June 1.

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They’re already in first place in the NL East, but the Washington Nationals have decided to call in the cavalry anyway.

As Talk Nats Blog first reported, Washington is expected to promote speedy shortstop Trea Turner, whom MLB.com rates as baseball’s No. 9 prospect, from Triple-A Syracuse. MLB.com’s William Ladson confirmed Turner will join the team Friday in Cincinnati:

After an uneventful 27-game look-see last September, this will be Turner’s second go-around in The Show. And this one may also be brief and uneventful. With Ryan Zimmerman only expected to be out for a couple of days, Turner may only be with the Nationals long enough to fill in on the infield before going back to the minors.

However, there is more than a decent chance Turner could be up for good.

As Jeff Todd noted at MLB Trade Rumors, the Nationals don’t need to worry about playing the service-time game with Turner. He won’t get credit for a full season in the majors no matter how long he stays up. As such, Washington will still control his rights through 2022. 

Beyond that, there’s the kinda-sorta-very obvious reality that the Nationals could use a player with Turner’s talents.

In the midst of a spring training showing in which he posted a .717 OPS, Turner was arguably ready to be a Nationals regular at the start of the 2016 season. After what he’s done at Triple-A since, he looks even more ready. 

In 50 games, Turner has put up a .310/.376/.472 slash line. His 61 total hits put him third among International League hitters, and he’s looked good in collecting them.

Though Turner hasn’t hit the ball with much authority, Daren Willman of MLB.com and Baseball Savant fame showed how he’s done an excellent job of spreading his hits around:

Between this and his raw numbers, the 22-year-old NC State alum is supporting the widely held notion that he has an above-average hit tool. 

Meanwhile, Turner is making the most of his way-way-way above-average speed. In 17 tries, he’s swiped 17 bags. That’s already more than halfway to his single-season high of 29, an improvement he credits to how he’s developed the smarts to match his legs.

“I think it’s just about knowing the game,” Turner said of his baserunning last month, via MiLB.com’s Michael Peng. “Knowing what the pitcher is going to do, knowing who’s hitting behind you and the counts. Just trying to relax out there. When you try to get jumps, you may end up doing stupid things and make a mistake. If you stay relaxed, I think you can take advantage of a lot of opportunities out there.”

Despite his hit tool and speed, Turner is not a perfect prospect. He has some swing-and-miss in his game. Even calling his power “average” may be a stretch. And as MASN Sports’ Mark Zuckerman reported, a big reason the Nationals sent Turner to Syracuse was to work on his defense.

Turner’s glove may still be a work in progress. When Baseball Prospectus’ Adam Hayes saw Turner in May, he remarked that, though the physical tools to play a good shortstop were there, Turner was “still working to improve timing/reads.” 

Adding Turner to the Nats defense could therefore be a case of subtraction by addition. Since Daniel Murphy isn’t moving from second base, Turner would replace Danny Espinosa at shortstop. According to the metrics, Espinosa’s mostly a good defender.

But the catch with Espinosa is no secret. His defense is barely (if at all) worth his .200 average or his .637 OPS. Since Stephen Drew hasn’t done any better when he’s spelled Espinosa, it’s no wonder the Nationals are at No. 23 overall in shortstop offense (65 wRC+).

That’s one problem Turner might be able to fix, and it’s not even the biggest one.

As bad as the Nationals shortstops have been at the dish, the club’s leadoff hitters have been worse. They own just a .185/.231/.303 batting line, putting them dead last in MLB in adjusted offense. Michael Taylor wasn’t the answer. Ben Revere hasn’t been, either.

Turner’s bat and speed potentially provide an ideal solution to the problem. That could mean yet another boost for a Nationals offense that, despite a slumping Bryce Harper, has been on a nice roll since a slow April.

Because their offense has been rolling along just fine without Turner, the Nationals won’t necessarily be shooting themselves in the foot if they only have him fill in over the weekend. They’re not in a “red alert” situation, so they shouldn’t feel compelled to keep him around just for the sake of having some fresh blood.

There’s no question, though, that the needs Turner can fill for the Nationals are needs he’s going to fill sooner or later. If the Nationals choose sooner, an already good team stands to get even better.

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

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Rich Hill doesn’t dwell on things that aren’t important. Even if that means shrugging at his status as one of baseball’s best pitchers and, in all probability, a likely first-time All-Star at the age of 36.

With a 2.25 ERA through 11 starts, the Oakland Athletics left-hander has indeed been one of the American League‘s elite starters in 2016. Add in what he did in four starts with the Boston Red Sox late last season, and MLB‘s ERA leaders over the last calendar year line up like this:

1. Jake Arrieta: 1.32
2. Clayton Kershaw: 1.46
3. Rich Hill: 2.03

But when this was tossed at Hill as he was sitting in Oakland’s dugout this past weekend, it had the same effect on him that a bullet has on Superman. As far as he’s concerned, reveling in success is not the best use of his time.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there’s no real time to waste,” he said. “The opportunities are in the present, and focusing on what you’re doing means focusing on the process and not the results.”

Such laser-guided focus would suit any player well. But coming from a guy who’s been on a journey like few others, it feels less like a luxury and more like a well-honed survival instinct.

Way back in 2005, Baseball America ranked Hill as the Chicago Cubs‘ No. 5 prospect and gave him a projection as a possible No. 2 starter. That’s where he seemed to be headed by 2007, when he broke through with a 3.92 ERA and 183 strikeouts in 195 innings as a 27-year-old.

But then the injury bug bit him, and it kept chewing. A bad back limited Hill to five starts in 2008. In 2009, he needed surgery to repair a torn labrum. In 2011, it was time for Tommy John surgery.

By 2012, Hill’s career wasn’t sidetracked so much as derailed. What was once an over-the-top delivery had become a sidearm delivery, and what was once a life as a promising young starter had become a life as a not-so-young LOOGY.

But after stops with the Baltimore Orioles, Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Angels and Washington Nationals organizations, a chance to turn back the clock arrived last June. All it took was his release from the Syracuse Chiefs, Washington’s Triple-A team.

“Timing and opportunity came together to where I was able to go home for a month and reassess getting back into starting,” Hill said. “It was something that I’d always wanted to do, but while I was relieving…I was dedicating my time and effort to being the best I could be as a left-handed reliever.”

Back home in Milton, Massachusetts, Hill began working out with the same American Legion team he played for growing up. As he stated at the Players’ Tribune, he began with a 75-pitch bullpen session and went from there, proving to himself he could maintain his old over-the-top delivery.

The problem was that no affiliated team was going to gamble on a guy whose last major league start happened in 2009. With a nudge from Jared Porter, formerly the Red Sox’s director of pro scouting and now a member of the Cubs front office, that’s how Hill ended up with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League.

The result was two starts of utter dominance: no runs, two hits, three walks with 21 strikeouts in 11 innings.

The Red Sox pounced, signing Hill and sending him to Triple-A Pawtucket. And though he wasn’t guaranteed a shot at Boston’s rotation, a chance materialized when the Red Sox called him up to be part of a six-man rotation in September.

Hill immediately made it clear he didn’t mean to waste it:

That was the first of Hill’s three straight 10-strikeout games. After a fourth solid effort, his return to starting featured a 1.55 ERA, 36 strikeouts and five walks in 29 innings.

That got everyone’s attention, including the A’s, whose offseason to-do list included finding a starter.

“We’ve followed Rich for a long time,” Dan Feinstein, Oakland’s assistant general manager, pro scouting and player personnel, said in a phone interview. “But after he put together four really good starts for the Red Sox, we looked at potential free agents and we saw him as a low-risk option with plenty of upside.”

Oakland’s offer was $6 million for one year. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reported Hill did have a better offer elsewhere, but he wanted the rotation spot the A’s were offering. Done deal.

Fast-forward six months, and what was a small-sample-size slice of dominance has turned into the real deal. So at this point, the only question is why anyone is still surprised.

As Feinstein said, Hill has always had two valuable talents: “He’s been able to induce a high number of swings and misses, and he’s been able to keep hard contact to a minimum. He’s never really given up a lot of extra-base hits.”

No kidding. Hill’s career strikeout rate now stands at an even 9.0 per nine innings. And among lefties who’ve made at least 80 starts since 2005, the .374 slugging percentage he’s allowed is a top-10 mark.

At first, these numbers look out of place on a pitcher who only throws a 90-91 mph fastball with a curveball and not much else. But this is a day and age of newfangled pitching metrics, and Hill is a poster boy for several of them.

Such as, a “Spin Rate!” poster. According to Baseball Savant, Hill has averaged more spin on his pitches than any other starter since resurfacing last year:

1. Rich Hill: 2,565 rpm
2. Garrett Richards: 2,554 rpm
3. Justin Verlander: 2,495 rpm

Hill’s Uncle Charlie leads the way, averaging 2,792 revolutions per minute. Ho hum, says he.

“I think it’s the same as asking a guy about his great fastball. They’ve always been able to throw a fastball at 96, 97, 98, 100 miles per hour,” he said. “With my curveball, I’ve always been able to have a feel for spin.”

That spin creates a curveball unlike any other. According to Baseball Prospectus, the amount of glove-side run on Hill’s curveball dwarfs that of any other curveball thrown by any other lefty starter. In person, it looks like this:

Except for those times when Hill feels like throwing sidearm, of course. Then it looks like this:

Other times, Hill’s curve takes the form of an eephus worthy of Rip Sewell:

Whatever the shape, the damage Hill has wrought with that curveball could fill a disaster movie. Per Brooks Baseball, it’s held hitters to a .183 average and racked up 48 of 110 strikeouts since last September.

It’s therefore no small compliment that Hill’s fastball has been just as good. It’s held hitters to a .181 average and recorded 54 of those 110 strikeouts. This season, the whiff-per-swing rate on his four-seamer is the highest of any starter. That’s good for a guy who maxes out at 93 miles per hour, which points back to the spin.

“We can sit here and talk about a 90-93 fastball and why it looks like it’s 96-97,” he said. “When you have the highest swing-and-miss percentage in baseball on your fastball, people might ask, ‘Why is that?’ Because when people see velocity, sometimes they don’t understand the perceptual side of it.”

If you want to be a dominant starter, overpowering stuff is a good foundation. But it’s also necessary to have an idea where it’s going, and that’s where Hill’s rebirth looks more like a transformation.

After walking 4.3 batters per nine innings through his first 10 seasons, Hill has walked only 2.8 batters per nine innings since his return. And that’s actually underselling his ability to find the strike zone. Over the last year, he’s frequented the zone more often than every starter except Steven Matz.

The easy explanations are Hill going back over the top and also back to the third base side of the rubber. But as Hill sees it, it also has to do with an unexpected gift from one of his career’s darkest chapters.

“It’s really my shoulder strength, and I think that came back due, in part, to having Tommy John surgery,” he said. “Having Tommy John and being able to come back from that with a well-rounded shoulder program really strengthened my ability to command the ball better.”

Hill’s resurgence is not a case of a guy making good on a bargain with the baseball gods. What he’s doing is making better use of the same great stuff he’s always had. Health permitting—and this is where his recent groin strain permits crossed fingers—there’s no reason it can’t continue.

Clearly, his first All-Star Game is just around the…uh, wait.

“That’s nothing I even think about,” he said at the mention of the idea. “All the extracurricular stuff outside of what you’re focusing on in the moment is irrelevant because you can’t do more than what you can do right now in this moment.”

Hey, if it works, it works.

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

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Remember when Bryce Harper was Bryce Harper?

Oh, sure. The Washington Nationals‘ star right fielder has occasionally looked like himself here and there in recent weeks. And before he took a wayward fastball to his right knee on Memorial Day, Harper had been showing signs of life.

But from a wider perspective, what Harper’s been going through still looks like an extended slump. And since it’s been going on for more than a month, it’s deserving of investigative treatment.

Let’s begin on April 24, a day in which Harper’s follow-up to his unanimous National League MVP season in 2015 peaked with a pinch-hit, game-tying home run against the Minnesota Twins:

That was Harper’s ninth home run in only 18 games, and it raised his batting line for 2016 to .323/.405/.855.

Even better, Harper’s batting line over the last calendar year at that point was .336/.458/.688 with 47 home runs. At the least, he was established as baseball’s most feared hitter. At the most, he had surpassed Mike Trout as baseball’s best player, period.

Thus entered the slump. Harper has managed a line of just .189/.420/.326 ever since. This has happened over 33 games, which is not a small sample size. Hence, the valid usage of the word “slump.”

Granted, it’s not worth nothing that the 23-year-old has kept his on-base percentage as high as the sky, but this is a double-edged sword, as that OBP wouldn’t exist without the Barry Bonds treatment.

A Google search will reveal how many have already noticed pitchers are refusing to pitch to Harper like they once refused to pitch to Bonds. The numbers don’t throw water on the idea either. Harper’s rate of pitches in the strike zone has fallen like so:

• First 18 games: 46.4 percent
• Last 33 games: 35.3 percent

Relative to the rest of his career, Harper has never seen anything like this. Few hitters have, in fact. A zone rate that small is Pablo Sandoval and Josh Hamilton territory.

It’s to Harper’s credit that he hasn’t given in by swinging as wildly as those two do (or used to do, anyway). His overall swing percentage has dropped from 48.7 to 38.7, and his chase percentage has dropped from 28.4 to 26.9. As a direct result, his walk rate has gone from 13.5 percent to 27.5 percent.

But though patience is a good thing to have, it takes a lot more to make a hitter. Just ask Dusty Baker.

“I really admire Bryce for the patience and stuff that he’s shown,” the Nationals skipper recently told Mark Zuckerman of MASN Sports. “But a hitter wants to hit, know what I mean? And he’s gotten a few pitches to hit. Not as many as he had in the past. But he’s had a few pitches to hit, where he’s pulled them foul, or fouled them back.”

Hitters do indeed want to hit. And though he may be getting the same treatment as Bonds, Harper is failing where the former San Francisco Giants super-duper-star succeeded.

By comparing how they’ve swung and made contact with pitches in the strike zone, we can see Harper has been hitting what he’s been given as well as neither Bonds in his heyday nor even his own old self:

Note: Plate-discipline data for Bonds’ 2001 season is not available.

Bonds didn’t jump at everything he saw in the zone, but he wasn’t passive and was good at making contact when he pounced. Harper, on the other hand, is suddenly way more passive in the zone and hasn’t been as good at making contact when he has attacked.

It doesn’t help that, as FanGraphs‘ Jeff Sullivan pointed out in early May, pitchers have taken to exclusively and precisely working Harper on the low-and-outside corner of the zone. But good pitches to hit have been there for him, and even the man himself can admit he’s failed to take advantage.

“You have to understand you may only get one or two [good] pitches a game,” Harper told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post in late May. “If you don’t hit them, it’s your fault.”

Because Harper knows what his malfunction is, it’s easy to ask why he can’t overcome it. The easy answer might also be the best answer: He’s letting his frustration get to him.

During his slump, we’ve seen Harper curse out an umpire, break a bat in anger and throw a dugout temper tantrum. He may not be himself behind the scenes either, as Boswell wrote Harper “sometimes has lacked his customary energy and seems less enthusiastic.”

This could be what convinced Baker to give Harper what he called a “mental day off” on May 25, when his only responsibility was to “just concentrate and watch the game.” A few days later, it is fair to wonder if that’s made a difference.

Harper has slammed a couple of home runs in his last five games, after all. One was this titanic blast off St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Mike Leake:

And the other was this clout to dead center off Adam Wainwright:

Watch closely, and you’ll see Harper destroy a hanging curve that was supposed to be in the dirt in the first video. In the second, he crushed a fastball that was supposed to be off the outside corner but drifted over the plate. Those were two hittable mistakes, and he made them look like hittable mistakes.

That’s good news! And there’s more. Though Harper’s zone rate since his mental health day has stayed low at 35.4 percent, his swing rate has increased to 47.7 percent. His rate of contact within the zone, meanwhile, is sitting at 100 percent.

This sample size is way, way, way too small to conclude that Harper has officially broken out of his slump. It’s also imperfect. Those homers are two of only four hits, and Harper’s increased aggressiveness also comes with less discipline and more whiffs. And though his knee injury supposedly isn’t serious, knee injuries of any kind are not to be trusted.

But if Harper’s recent heroics aren’t a breakout, they’re at least a hint of one. Rather than a question of talent, him snapping out of his pitcher-induced haze has always been a question of taking initiative. That appears to be what he’s doing.

If so, Bryce Harper may soon be Bryce Harper again.

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

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It was already clear the New York Mets had beef with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and then Chase Utley happened.

Sorry, that should read Chase Utley happened again.

About seven months have passed since Utley riled the Mets with his takeout slide of Ruben Tejada in last year’s National League Division Series, but the latest clash between the Mets and Dodgers at Citi Field is making it feel like it was only yesterday. But try as they might to put him in his place, Utley hasn’t let the scorn of those clad in blue and orange get to him.

Despite being mercilessly booed, the veteran second baseman did his best to lift the Dodgers by collecting four RBI in a 6-5 loss in Friday’s series opener. And in a 9-1 Dodgers romp Saturday evening, Utley went from nuisance to full-on heel.

His on switch, it would seem, was flipped when Noah Syndergaard said hello with a 99 mph fastball behind Utley’s back in the top of the third inning:

A fastball that was more than likely designed to give Utley a bruise instead earned Syndergaard an immediate ejection from home plate umpire Adam Hamari. Syndergaard and Mets skipper Terry Collins were baffled at the quick hook, as was the Twitterverse, where the discussion of whether the hook was too quick could rage for eternity.

But beanball or no beanball, quick hook or properly timed hook, Utley saw fit to reply to the message with a couple of his own. 

His first reply was a solo home run that put the Dodgers up 1-0 in the sixth. An inning later, Utley’s second reply came in the form of a grand slam. The highlight of it might as well be punctuated by a sad trombone effect:

With that, Utley ran his RBI count for the game to five, and his RBI count for the series to nine. And he and the Dodgers still have one more game to go.

Think the case of Utley vs. the Mets is now closed? That would be anticlimactic, but it’s not impossible.

When the Mets and Dodgers hooked up for the first time in 2016 at Dodger Stadium in early May, the question of whether the Amazins had anything planned for Utley found its way to Collins. He waved it off, telling Marc Carig of Newsday, “I haven’t said a word about anything.”

Maybe this was Collins’ way of saying, “I can neither confirm nor deny.” Or, maybe, he simply had the same mindset as D.J. Short of NBC Sports:

As such, it’s possible Syndergaard was acting on his own when he threw at Utley. He suggested otherwise after Saturday’s game, telling Anthony DiComo of MLB.com the pitch wasn’t intentional. But knowing he buzzed Alcides Escobar in last year’s World Series, it wouldn’t be the first time he took it upon himself to throw a purpose pitch.

Then again, maybe the notion the Mets will now be leaving Utley alone is an exercise in kidding ourselves.

If Collins wasn’t in “I can neither confirm nor deny” mode in speaking about Utley earlier this month, that may be where he was with his comments after Saturday’s game.

“I’m not going to say Noah was throwing at him,” Collins told reporters, including Joe Trezza of MLB.com. “But there was a time in this game when you had a shot.”

If “a shot” can be taken to mean a shot at retaliation, Syndergaard’s whiff on hitting Utley may mean the Mets’ business with him is still very much unfinished. And if there was a thirst for retaliation after he hurt them last October, it may now be doubly strong after he embarrassed them Saturday.

Even if the Mets don’t seek further retaliation against Utley, Saturday’s kerfuffle could draw a response from the Dodgers anyway.

On the mound for the Dodgers in Sunday evening’s series finale will be Clayton Kershaw. He’s mainly (and rightfully) known as the best pitcher in the universe, but he’s also a guy who’s not afraid of going old school in his own right. If he can go to bat for Hanley Ramirez by throwing at Matt Holliday in 2014, maybe he’ll feel comfortable going to bat for Utley too.

Either way, a rivalry that already feels heated could become downright flame-roasted on Sunday. The Mets will stoke the fires if they target Utley. The Dodgers will fan the flames if they stick up for Utley.

And if nothing happens, the Dodgers-Mets rivalry isn’t terribly likely to end there. Even outside of the Utley factor, it takes a microscope to search for any positive vibes between the Dodgers and Mets. They’ve been playing nothing but tense baseball ever since they hooked up in last year’s NLDS, and the bad vibes may now extend even to the higher levels.

It already feels like ancient history after watching Utley get buzzed and then blow up, but it was only Saturday morning that Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported the Mets had blown the whistle on the Dodgers over their kinda-sorta shady defensive positioning tactics. If these two clubs meet again in the postseason this October, that could loom just as large as anything else.

Add it all up, and Dodgers vs. Mets is beginning to feel like the National League’s answer to Toronto Blue Jays vs. Texas Rangers. That rivalry began in last year’s postseason and has carried over. The Dodgers and Mets have done the same.

For the time being, it’s Utley and the Dodgers who own the rights to the last laugh. But the question now isn’t whether it will change hands, but when.

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

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Another year, another season of Major League Baseball having more talented rookies than it knows what to do with. And if nothing else, that makes for enticing Rookie of the Year races.

This year’s Rookie of the Year contestants might not be quite as strong as a 2015 class that was among the best in recent memory, but it’s no slouch. There are good competitions going for the American League and National League Rookie of the Year awards, and our aim is to break down how they’re looking.

That involves weighing two things: total body of work and the way each player is trending. And in these rankings, the second thing matters just as much as the first.

We’ll begin with a quick look at some rookies who are on the edges of the races, and then dive into the top five contenders for each league.

Begin Slideshow

Aledmys Diaz has already done one thing that’s hard to do in today’s MLB: emerge as a surprise star.

Now all he needs to do is prove this is for real. 

For the moment, the St. Louis Cardinals‘ rookie shortstop is so much more than a mere stand-in for the injured Jhonny Peralta. He’s hitting .336 with a .937 OPS through his first 43 games. He ranks fifth in the National League in batting average and is outpacing Bryce Harper in adjusted offense.

Diaz isn’t about to get caught up in his numbers. As the 25-year-old Cuba native told Cheryl Rosenberg of the Guardian: “If you start thinking about stats, you lose focus.”

But for the rest of us, not dwelling on his stats is out of the question.

After all, they’re the things highlighting Diaz as an emerging star, and he’s more intriguing than the average specimen. In the spirit of Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu, he looks like MLB’s next great Cuban star. In the spirit of Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Xander Bogaerts and fellow rookies Corey Seager and Trevor Story, Diaz also fits in with baseball’s young shortstop revolution.

As recently as a year ago, Diaz didn’t seem likely to find his way into either circle.

He didn’t hit the ground running after the Cardinals signed him to a four-year, $8 million contract in March 2014, batting a good-not-great .273 with a .765 OPS at High-A and Double-A that season. Once he was sitting on a .235 average and .636 OPS early last July, the Cardinals designated him for assignment.

Ever since then, though, Diaz has been on a rampage.

In his final 49 games at Double-A and Triple-A in 2015, Diaz hit .337 with a .986 OPS. He then went on to hit .315 with a .987 OPS in the Arizona Fall League. Add that to what he’s doing this season and your eyes begin to widen as you realize Diaz has been raking for almost a year straight.

“I started feeling more comfortable at home plate, then I started making good contact and having quality at-bats,” Diaz said of his turnaround, per Mark Saxon of ESPN.com. “With this sport, it’s always mental.”

The catch is Diaz‘s ability, or lack thereof, on the other side of the ball. Both his 10 errors and his metrics characterize him as a below-average defender. There may be no fixing that, as Baseball America‘s book on him said he’s a shaky fit at shortstop at best and not at all a fit at worst.

But as long as you’re performing and looking like a legitimately good hitter, subpar defense becomes that much easier to forgive.

The fact that Diaz has drawn walks in only 5.0 percent of his plate appearances makes it look like he has an aggressive approach, but he doesn’t. Going into Tuesday, his overall swing rate of 45.5 percent and chase rate of 26.7 percent were under the league averages of 45.8 and 28.1, respectively.

With a 9.3 strikeout percentage, Diaz is also one of the hardest hitters in the majors to whiff. And according to Baseball Savant, the average exit velocity on his batted balls at the start of play on Tuesday was 90.6 miles per hour. That was the exact same as Mike Trout and Kris Bryant.

If you want to make a great hitter, a disciplined approach, an ability to put the ball in play and an ability to barrel the ball are the right ingredients to start with. Now all Diaz must do is figure out the one thing that’s gotten him into a spot of trouble recently.

After hitting .423 with a 1.186 OPS in April, Diaz is hitting just .256 with a .714 OPS in May. Some kind of downturn was inevitable after such an incredible start, sure, but there’s more than just natural forces at work with this one.

Though Diaz has maintained the solid approach he had in April, his strikeouts are up and the quality of his contact is down this month:

Pitchers have made life tough for Diaz by giving him fewer strikes to hit. He was seeing 50.8 percent of his pitches in the strike zone in April. In May, that figure has dropped to 46.6 percent.

Pitchers have also been throwing to a specific area. Per Brooks Baseball, they didn’t have a set location pattern against Diaz in April. But in May, they’ve set their target against the righty swinger to low and away:

This makes sense on two levels. This is the obvious way to avoid the damage Diaz did to middle-in pitches in April. This is also the classic way of dealing with dead pull hitters.

Hence, Diaz‘s missing ingredient. The best hitters can use all parts of the field, but he entered Tuesday pulling 48.9 percent of his balls in play. To boot, times in which he’s pulled the ball are generally the only times he’s performed like a great hitter:

• To Left: 1.581 OPS
• To Center: .767 OPS
• To Right: .739 OPS

What Diaz must do now is adjust to the adjustment against him. That’s where there’s good news. He’s trimmed his pull percentage from 52.2 in April to 45.5 in May and upped his use of the opposite field from 16.4 percent to 27.3 percent.

This hasn’t translated to results, but it’s promising that Diaz hasn’t responded to the low-and-away attack by doubling down on his pull habit. That’s a sign he might be capable of cleaning up his big exploitable weakness. 

This is not to be taken as a guarantee he’ll keep hitting .336, but Diaz doesn’t need to be a Miguel Cabrera doppelganger to pull his weight. At a time when the average shortstop is only hitting .254 with a .693 OPS, he has a relatively low bar to clear to qualify as a star-caliber hitter at his position.

Staying above that bar is doable. With nearly two full months of major league action in the bag, it says a lot about the quality of Diaz‘s bat that you really have to dig to find his fatal flaw. And if he does indeed clean that up, there won’t be many question marks left looming over his hitting talent.

To put it in straightforward terms, this guy might actually be for real.

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

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Matt Harvey, the one they call the “Dark Knight of Gotham,” has become a riddle in need of a solution.

For the New York Mets, that should involve taking him off the mound. At least for a little while.

The only positive takeaway from Harvey’s latest start is that he didn’t get booed off the mound this time. Squaring off against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park on Tuesday evening, the 27-year-old right-hander surrendered five runs in five innings in a 7-4 Mets loss. He walked two and gave up eight hits, three of which landed in the cheap seats.

Harvey has now surrendered at least five earned runs in three straight starts, bumping his ERA up to an ugly 6.08. That could make anyone look like a bad pitcher. But next to the 2.53 ERA he managed in his first three seasons, it makes him look like a broken pitcher.

This is typically where we go to the latest update from the man himself on where the cracks are, but Harvey had no explanations for the media following Tuesday’s game. In fact, David Lennon of Newsday is among the many who reported he had no words at all:

Even without hearing it from Harvey himself, though, it’s plenty clear at this point he’s not himself.

It’s not just the bad ERA that sticks out. He’s gone from striking out over a batter per inning in his first three seasons to striking out only 7.5 per nine innings in 2016. He’s also gone from allowing 0.6 home runs per nine innings to more than twice that at 1.4 per nine innings.

One of the root causes of Harvey’s sudden hittability has been hard to miss. His fastball doesn’t have the same zip it had in 2015. Brooks Baseball has its average release speed down from an average of 96.5 miles per hour to an average 94.9 miles per hour. 

Harvey’s stuff also just hasn’t looked the same to the naked eye. His average spin rate would seem to confirm that, as Baseball Savant confirms it’s also down from 2015:

• 2015: 2,263 rpm
• 2016: 2,217 rpm

It’s impossible to consider all this without casting a glance at Harvey’s 2015 workload. After missing all of 2014 while recovering from Tommy John surgery, he returned to pitch 189.1 innings in the regular season and another 26.2 in the Mets’ World Series run. Terry Collins, Harvey’s manager, and Scott Boras, his agent, have entertained the idea he could be feeling a hangover effect from all that work in 2016.

Harvey has avoided playing that card. He’s instead repeatedly pointed his finger at his mechanics. Most recently, he even tried to get back on track over the weekend with an impromptu throwing session on the Citi Field mound, where each throw could be digitally tracked for further analysis.

“For me it was good that once I started feeling like I was throwing the ball correctly and comfortably, it was all the same,” Harvey said of the session, via Adam Rubin of ESPN.com. “I think in my last 20 pitches, I had a very consistent arm slot.”

Whatever Harvey supposedly figured out, though, didn’t translate to Tuesday’s start. Brooks Baseball can show he couldn’t keep a consistent arm slot. And at an average of 94.2 miles per hour, his fastball was even slower than usual.

That brings us to the crossroads the Mets now find themselves at with Harvey. They’ve tried letting him pitch through his struggles, but that hasn’t worked. They’ve tried to help him iron out his mechanics, but that hasn’t worked either. From there, their options only get more drastic.

Whether they like it or not, they have to pick one.

Sending Harvey down to the minors to get himself squared away is the nuclear option. As Marc Carig of Newsday reported, the Mets considered that even before Harvey’s latest dud.

But that obviously didn’t happen. And as Carig senses, nobody should be bracing (or hoping) for that to happen now:

Fair enough. It would be extreme for the Mets to go straight to the nuclear option. It would also do no favors for a relationship that’s already had contentious moments. Considering they’d like to get at least two more good years out of Harvey before his club control runs out at the end of 2018, it’s not yet worth it to risk that.

Skipping Harvey’s next start, however, is the least the Mets can do.

Rubin’s report on Harvey’s throwing session mentioned the Mets thought about doing so after the Nationals shelled him last week. After Tuesday’s game, he senses the wind blowing that way again:

This is the logical next step. If the Mets are lucky, it’ll be enough to rest Harvey’s arm, smooth out his mechanics, clear out his head and fix whatever else may be ailing him.

If not, the Mets will have to devise a way to take him off the mound for more than just one start. The best way to do that would be to “find” an injury and place him on the disabled list for a couple of weeks. If there is indeed nothing physically wrong with him, that could at least cure what could be (and probably is) badly shaken confidence.

The silver lining of all this must be kept in focus. Harvey’s struggles have been ugly, but he hasn’t dragged the Mets to the bottom with him. They’re still enjoying some of the best starting pitching in the league, and their 26-19 record puts them only a game-and-a-half off the Nationals’ pace in the NL East. Even with him weighing them down, they’re still a good team.

But for the Mets to go as far in 2016 as they did in 2015, they need Harvey to be himself again. And since waiting for that to happen on its own has failed, it’s time for plan B.

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

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