With the trade deadline approaching (ed. note: so long!), we have players donning their current affiliation’s uniforms for a final game.  Aside from a few tears shed by baseball’s infantile devotees (ages 3 and up), these will be business-like transactions; it’s the buying and selling of goods.

For this article, we’ll be looking at pitcher performances in their final game before being traded.   The last game a pitcher pitches for a team is a relatively inconsequential event.  What I mean is that teams searching for that piece to propel their momentum in the efforts of a playoff push know what Cole Hamels is worth.  His value did not take a significant ding after two abysmal starts when he totaled 6.1 IP, 20 H, 14 ER, and 5 K (July 10th and 19th), and neither did it skyrocket after his performance on Saturday.  You know what happened, but let me recap: In his last outing for the Philadelphia Phillies, Hamels threw a no-hitter against the Cubs – the very team who he could have ended up with.  That’s probably already a better idea for an article – pitchers that were traded to the team they just faced – but I’ve started the research for the article I’m currently writing, an article that, much like my night, is, for lack of a better word, aimless.  My one year old son is asleep, my wife went to a birthday dinner, I’m in my underwear watching X-Men 2: X-Men United (for the umpteenth time), drinking Diet Hansen’s Tangerine Lime, and thinking about Hamels’ almost 100-point game score in what was his last game as a Phillie.

For the purpose of this article, but mainly to eventually get some sleep tonight, we’re going to limit the research to this current decade (2010 being the starting point), and for pitchers that went to teams that made the playoffs only.  Cole Hamels’ no-hitter scored a 98 on Bill James’ game score calculation, with the only two blemishes keeping it from being a nice even 100, being the two walks he issued over the 9 IP.  There have been two pitchers traded already, Scott Kazmir and Johnny Cueto, and they each posted game scores north of 70 (73 and 78 respectively).  The starting pitcher talent level that could swap hands this year is pretty special.  It’s hard to remember the last time there was a talent pool this deep or when there were this many teams in viable contention to make playoff pushes, so it’s no surprise that we’ve seen a couple of really, really well-pitched games.  But in terms of single-game performances, how good is a game score of even Kazmir’s 73 in the final game before a player gets swapped?  You’d have to go back to 2010 to find a game score as high as 70, which was what Cliff Lee scored for the Mariners after dominating the Tigers over 8 IP.  (Zack Greinke had a 72 before he was traded to the Angels in 2012, but they didn’t make the playoffs.)

Below you’ll find a table with players that were traded close to the deadline to teams that made the playoffs from 2010 – 2014.  Next to their name you’ll find the game score of their last game pitched with the team that traded them (organized by game score) compared to the average game scores they posted with the team that traded them and the team they were traded to.  It’s highly likely that, with so much going on tonight – X-Men just ended – I missed one or two or three starting pitchers.  ((Also spoiler alert (Not about X-Men which I’ve seen close to 100 times now): There are no correlations between that one game score and their value for the rest of the season because a pitcher is the pitcher they’ve been for the body of their work)).

(Game Score Equation courtesy of Bill James: 50 + (outs recorded) + (2*IP after 4th inning) + (1*K) – (2*H) – (4*ER) – (2*Unearned Runs) – (1*BB) = Game Score)

**GmScA = Game Score Average

I know that 18 games is a small sample size, but 47.2 is a pretty sizable drop from averages of 54.6 and 54.5.  Perhaps it’s the uncertainty that these players are facing with the looming trade deadline that causes a dip in performance, or perhaps this is a silly, SILLY thing to look into and it means absolutely nothing!!!

But back to this year’s impressive pool of starting pitchers that were rumored to be available.  Let’s say all the top pitchers that are thought to be moving have thrown their last game for their respective teams.  Here’s a look at a table just like the one above but for the pitchers thought to be moving this year.  (This is assuming the caveats that all the players have pitched their final game for their respective teams and that they will all be traded to or have been traded to teams that will make the playoffs).

That’s a lot of 70s.  There are also three pitchers in this group with average game scores of over 60, which is one more than the number of pitchers that went to playoff bound teams from 2010 – 2014.  After all this, I wish there was a way to make this post more interesting, or show some correlation between any of these numbers, but there’s simply not!  It was a thought and I ran with it.  One game does not make a player, but I think in some TINY way, it is another example of what we know to be true:  there is some serious talent that’s about to switch hands – get excited.

Last night, I was lying in bed with my arms crossed behind my head, staring at my ceiling, and thinking of what a fantastic season Paul Goldschmidt is having.  “He’s so locked in; I wonder how pitchers have pitched him differently over the course of this season; I bet he’s super cool; I bet we’d hit it off; I wonder what kind of dogs he likes”.   The sheets rustled and my wife turned over and asked, sleepily, “Who are you talking about?”  I looked for her face in the dark.  I was surprised that I had been saying that out loud, but I just whispered to her, “I wasn’t saying anything, you were dreaming”.  She turned over and I said quietly to myself – “Of course it’s Golden Retrievers”.

Goldy is 3 stolen bases away from a 20/20 season which is a rare feat for a first baseman.  Todd Frazier technically did do it last year, but he only started 43 games at 1B, so I would only count him as achieving it as a 3B.  For the remainder of this exercise I’m going to only use players who reached particular milestones while playing the primary position they’re listed for instead of what positions they were eligible for – I’ll apologize to Ben Zobrist in advance.

Let’s go around the diamond and find some completely arbitrary statistical rarities that may be reached this season!  Yay!  Pointless fun!!!

Catchers: A Catcher’s Triple Crown

Buster Posey is so good.  He currently ranks, among catchers, 2^nd in HR (14), 1^st in RBI (67), and 1^st in AVG (.325).  As a side note, he’s also thrown out 48.4% of attempted runners this year and leads all catchers in WAR by a wide margin (4.3 compared to Vogt’s second place 3.0).  But those offensive numbers I listed are clearly the triple-crown categories, aren’t they?  That’s rhetorical.  He’s second in HR right now, trailing Brian McCann and Salvador Perez each by one HR.  Posey has finished second in HR among catchers in 2014 and 2012, and comes up 3^rd overall during that span with 75, trailing only Carlos Santana (76) and Brian McCann (78).

We have to travel back in time to the turn of the century to find a catcher who actually posted numbers worthy of a triple-crown among catchers and you’ve probably already guessed that it was the fabulous, Mike Piazza.  He led all catchers in HR (38), RBI (113), and AVG (.324) in the year 2000; absolutely gaudy numbers for any position nowadays.  Think about it, when Miguel Cabrera won the triple-crown in 2012, amassing 44 bombs and 139 RBIs while hitting .330, Piazza’s performance in the NL would’ve put him 2^nd overall in HR, 2^nd overall in RBI, and 3^rd overall in average.  In the year 2000, his numbers ranked 10^th, 13^th, and 10^th, respectively – this point of dramatic difference in his rankings falls into the “different eras” conversation.  Of course this is only about offense, and Piazza is arguably the greatest offensive catcher of all time, but I have to throw in (no pun intended) that Piazza only succeeded in apprehending 22.5% of would be base stealers that year.  Ooph!

First Basemen: 20/20 Campaign

This was the catalyst for this article and I talked about it earlier.  Goldy should be able to get to 20/20 this year and it’s been over a decade since a 1B primary player achieved this elite mark.  A few players have come close, but the man who did it was Derrek Lee.  The year was 2003 and the big, Marlins’ first baseman smacked 31 HR and stole 21 bases.  I didn’t peg Goldschmidt for a 20/20 season this year and I still think that his speed will erode over the next couple seasons, but looking back at Lee, who is not technically a good comparison for Paul Goldschmidt, except that he too was 27 years old in 2003 and had the ability to swipe a bag, he averaged 13 SB over the next 2 years.  Goldy, you may have a few years left of some good wheels, you god…I mean dog.

*Anthony Rizzo may very well get to 20/20 this season, too.

Second Basemen: 150 wRC+

Did you know that Robinson Cano never achieved a wRC+ of 150 in his prime?  That was a kind of shocking revelation for me when I picked this number to single out.  He posted a 149 in 2012 and averaged 142 from 2010 – 2013, which is a shiny number, but it’s not what we’re looking for.  New member of the Kansas City Royals, Ben Zobrist achieved a wRC+ of 152 in 2009 for the Rays, but kind of like Frazier’s 20/20 season last year, Zobrist is ineligible to be considered here because he only accrued a 124 wRC+ as a second baseman in 2009, where he played just over half of his games.  So let’s keep looking.  The last true second baseman to achieve a 150wRC+ was Chase Utley in 2007.  Yeah, Utley was fantastic, and the conversations I have with myself about Goldschmidt are reminiscent of Mac’s conversations with himself about Chase Utley (Always Sunny In Philadelphia).  So who is hitting the mark this year?  It’s not Altuve if that’s what you were thinking.  In fact, this hitter was well below average in 2014, posting a wRC+ of 86.  But he’s increased his BB rate, cut down on Ks, matched his HR output in 32 less games, and has 10 more XBH this year compared to last.  He’s known for his 2^nd half slumps, as he has a career 130 wRC+ before the break and a 96 after it, but if he can continue his torrid pace, Jason Kipnis would be the next second baseman to reach 150 wRC+ over a full season.

Third Basemen: Ranking 1^st in OFF and DEF (per FanGraphs)

Josh Donaldson currently ranks 1^st among 3^rd Basemen with a 23.4 Off number and 2^nd with a 9.3 Def number.  These numbers are rarely mentioned, but they’re still worth using as measurements since Off is batting and base running combined above average, and Def is Fielding and Positional Adjustment combined above average (again, per fangraphs).  In Defense, he only trails leather-wizard, Nolan Arenado’s 10.9 mark.  It’s not impossible for him to make up that ground this year and if he does, he’d be in some elite company.  Starting from the year 2000, Donaldson would join Troy Glaus (2000), Adrian Beltre (2004), and Evan Longoria (2011) as the only players in this century to lead 3^rd basemen in both categories.

Shortstops: Playing in at least 160 G and accruing less than 1.0 WAR

This isn’t a list you want to find your name on, but there’s Marcus Semien, sitting at 0.4 WAR while having played in all but 1 of the Athletics’ games this season (100 out of 101).  Steamer has him projected to play 52 more games and accrue 0.6 more WAR which would give him 152 G and a WAR of 1.0, therefore making him ineligible for this list but let’s extrapolate that pace and say he does play in 160 games.  Semien started the season like a man on fire, swatting 6 HR and heisting 7 bags through the end of May to go along with a nice .283 AVG and a .770 OPS.  Of course his glove has been a cast iron skillet, absorbing some of that heat that he started with, and his offense has taken a nose dive as well.  Since the beginning of June, he’s hit 2 HR and stolen 2 bases (all of these stats came in July – so 0 HR and SB in June) and he’s hit a paltry .206 to go with a .550 OPS.

There are a few other cases of every day shortstops being as valuable (or as lacking in value) as Semien has been this year.  Most recently, in 2013 over 161 G, Starlin Castro was actually worth negative value, and logged a -0.1 WAR.  Orlando Cabrera’s name appears twice since the year 2000, posting a WAR of 0.7 in 2009 over 161 G, and a symmetric looking 0.0 WAR over 161 G in 2004.   The one other name on this list is Neifi Perez, who in 2000 was worth a whopping 0.3 WAR and played every single game for the Rockies.  While the Rockies have had more productive shortstops since then, they have had a tough time keeping one on the field for that many games (unless you span 3 seasons or so) – that was a really mean sentence.

Outfielders: 5 players 25 years or younger with 30 HR

The talent pool of young players in 2015 is well documented.  Mike Trout is Mike Trout and he already has eclipsed 30 HR.  Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are stepping up their games to join baseball’s elite.  Giancarlo Stanton is injured now, but should be a lock for 30 if he comes back this year.  And Joc Pederson has arrived in the bigs swinging some thunderous lumber.  Each of these players (using Steamer’s ROS projections) are on pace to hit 30 HR or more.

Going back to my arbitrary year cutoff, 2000, I can only find 2 other accounts of this phenomenon.

2012: (2 of the same players are on the 2015 list!!!)

And the year 2000

Again, the year 2000 was a completely different era.

Starting Pitchers: K-BB% above 30%

This one is a little less likely, but the player in the hunt is Clayton Kershaw, so, yeah.  Kershaw led all of baseball last year with a 27.8 K-BB%.  He’s at it again this year, pushing the needle to 28.9%.  His SwStr% is trending up yet again and it’s up to 16.1%.  It’s gone up every year since 2012 when it was 11.1%.  You know I love tables, so here’s one for Kershaw

*Whatever percentage points are missing from his pitch usage in that chart are allocated to change-ups.  **I think the table is self explanatory and therefore, won’t waste any time explaining it.

Kershaw’s 27.8 K-BB% was the highest mark since Curt Schilling’s 27.9% in 2002.  If Kershaw can push it above 29% he’d leap over 2002 and he’d be the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 2001 to be at 29% or higher.  Kershaw’s “rebounded” from his early season “struggles” with the long ball and has been as sharp as ever dating back to June 6^th.  From the beginning of the season through his start on June 1^st, his K-BB% sat at 24.8%.  Starting on June 6^th and including his start on July 23^rd, his K-BB% has been an absurd 33.9%.  If he can keep that up over his next 6 or 7 starts, depending on how many he has left, he could push that number to 30% and be the first pitcher since Pedro Freaking Martinez in 2000 to do so.  The insane thing about Pedro is that, in 2000, the league average K-BB% for starters was 6.7%; his was 30.8%, or 4.6 times the league average.  This particular category saw the leader’s rate drop every season until Cliff Lee led the category in 2010 with a 19.8 K-BB%.  Meanwhile the league’s starting pitcher average rate has gone up and is 12.2% this year.  Clayton currently sits at 2.4 times the league average, which is still phenomenal for a starting pitcher, but if you think about how inhuman he’s seemed over the course of the last couple of years, that just makes Pedro even more amazing, superlative, superlative, and superlative.

Relief Pitchers: AVG Velocity at 100 mph.

We’ll keep this one brief.  Pitch f/x data goes back to 2007 on FanGraphs, so that’s as far back as I can go, too.  Before 2011, Aroldis Chapman’s first full season in the pros, no one had averaged a 98 mph fastball before.  He did in 2011, and it sat at 98.1.  That number actually increased and kept increasing until it reached 100.2 mph in 2014.  That was his average fastball.  This year it’s a measly 99.5, but if anyone can do it, it would be the only man to do it.

Baseball is selfless in its ability to give us never-ending fun facts that the initiated will appreciate (I feel like there was some redundancy in that sentence).  This selflessness also serves as the primary reason why I’m sleep deprived and why my personal relationships are stunted.  So the next time your wife or husband or whoever, wakes up from their slumber to ask who you’re talking about, think of me, and if they’re statistically inclined, too, just say something like, “Oh hey, sorry to wake you, sweetie, it’s just that Paul Goldschmidt’s BB/K rate has been over 1 the last two months”, and then maybe, you two can lie awake and wonder about the wonders of Paul Goldschmidt’s approach at the plate this year.

I’m not going to tell you anything you can’t find out for yourself.  This is just a little research on Mr. Chen.  Alternative title would’ve been Chen Music, but I couldn’t find proof of an increase in high and inside fastballs.  Anyways:

Wei-Yin Chen’s surface level numbers have been great this year:

18 GS,   2.86 ERA,   1.12 WHIP,   93 K/116.1 IP

The thing is, he’s been just as good dating back to Jul 1^st of 2014:

33 GS,   2.88 ERA,   1.14 WHIP,   164 K/209.2 IP

His peripherals over that time have declared him lucky and say that this success in unsustainable.  His FIP, xFIP, and SIERA for each half have been quite different from the ERAs he’s put up.

Look, I get it, he doesn’t strike out even 20% of the batters he faces and he can struggle with the long ball.  But the Orioles’ defense is ranked 3^rd in the league by UZR, and 3^rd by UZR/150.  Ahead of the Orioles are the Rays and the Royals.  Each of these teams are outperforming their ERA indicators by a decent amount.

This does not mean that every pitcher on each of these teams is outperforming their peripherals but it’s obvious (and not because of that table) that defense helps pitchers’ numbers.  I also understand that Camden Yards is a little bit more of a hitters’ park than Kauffman and Tropicana, but that shows up in Chen’s numbers as he has surrendered HR at the rate of 1.29/9 IP at home and 0.89/9 IP on the road (July 3rd 2014 – present).  To be fair, I don’t know if 112 IP and 97.2 IP (home and away, respectively) are large enough sample sizes compared to his full body of work to be worth anything, but let’s say they are, and let’s see what Chen has done differently over his last 209.2 IP compared to his first 422 big league innings.

(209.2 denotes the last 209.2. IP by Chen, spanning from July 3rd, 2014 to his last start against the Yankees, and the 422 is the 422 IP prior to July 3rd of last season, which encompasses the rest of his career)

Even though his ground ball rate doesn’t lead to much confidence in terms of sustainability in that soft contact management, he still is inducing pop-ups at an above-average rate.  So whether it’s a change in sequencing or it’s just as easy as working ahead in more counts, there has been some variation in his pitch usage…another table.

Obviously he’s traded some curveballs and change-ups for sliders.  His fastball has become increasingly more valuable in 2015 at 8.9 runs above average, compared to 3.3 runs above average from 2014 which was his previous high.

The last thing he’s done better is pound the zone early in counts which has led to a slight decrease in batters’ plate discipline against him.

(Almost) Everywhere you want to see improvement there is improvement even if you have to look through a magnifying glass.  Granted, this could be Chen adjusting to the league and now the league will adjust to him.  It would be perfect for him to just cleanly split from the success he’s been having after the all star break and after this piece.

In conclusion, it’s hard to know what to make of Chen as a fantasy option in the long term because he is experiencing a deflated BABIP and a higher LOB% than he has in the past.  Is it all about the luck??  I’m not too bullish on him; the tweaks he has made, while they have led to some slightly positive results, do not warrant picking him up in a dynasty league, but if you’re behind in starts or innings Chen seems to be a solid option for QS/ERA/WHIP this season if he can thwart off the regression monster.  After all that, I did not recommend him in his start against the Yankees and their .325 wOBA (results on that game were meh – it was a QS, but he gave up 10 H in 6.1 IP, 3 ER, and struck out 3) but he’s at Tampa (94 wRC+) after that.  Projecting ahead, he’d face the Tigers (113 wRC+ which is best in the majors, but they could be selling some pieces and they will still be without Miguel Cabrera), and the Athletics (99 wRC+)who are also sellers.  After that it’s likely the Mariners and their 92 wRC+; I’d take that 4 start stretch.  Something to scratch your Chen about.

A.J. Pollock is, at the moment, one of the best fantasy outfielders in major league baseball.  He’s 4th according to the ESPN player rater but since most of you and I don’t REALLY know what that means, let’s say it a different way.  He is one of only four players with at least a .290 AVG, 10 HR, and 15 SB.  Still, whenever I talk with anyone about Pollock’s performance, the consensus opinion on him is more of a resonating question: “Is A.J. Pollock really this good?”  Let’s attempt to answer that.  Dating back to the beginning of 2014,  Pollock has played in 161 games.  We could round that up to 162 games, especially since players rarely play every single game of a season, and call it a full season, but I’m going to go the extra mile here and pull the last game from his 2013 campaign to have a constant 162 games for this exercise.  The stat line he has produced is impressive.

Let’s lower the bar a little bit so that we can find more players in THIS search: how many other players over their last 162 games have hit at the very minimum: .290, 90 R, 15 HR, 60 RBI, 25 SB?  The answer is 1, and that man is Starling Marte.

I’m not sure if that makes Marte a fair comparison.  We can compare them, but Marte delivers more line drives and raw power than Pollock does.  Marte, despite having a paltry 19.3% FB rate, has averaged 312 feet on his fly balls this year, 4th best in the majors, allowing him him to post an absurd 29.5% HR/FB rate – and we’re not even ready to get into park factors yet.  Pollock is just a bit more refined than Marte, posting a better BB rate and K rate than Marte has, by, obviously, swinging at better pitches to hit.

Pollock, too, has a fine average fly ball distance.  It’s 295 (a number he’s increased each year), which is good for 39th overall, smack dab in between Adam LaRoche to the north and Nolan Arenado to the south.  But Pollock has also been incrementally improving his BB/K ratio over the last three years, bringing it from 0.40 to 0.47 this year.  It could be as simple as that – a good player that has made strides in his approach at the plate, but I can’t just leave it at that.  Despite these improvements, albeit, very small ones, his batted ball profile looks right around league average.

Pollock is fast, so hitting a lot of ground balls works in his favor.  He’s been able to have higher than average IFH and BUH percentages in each of the last three years because of his speed.  However, despite being a below average line drive hitter this year, and throughout his career, he is less susceptible to BABIP fluctuations than other high frequency GB hitters like Alcides Escobar, Elvis Andrus, Jean Segura, because Pollock produces a hard hit rate higher than the league average – he is an authoritative hitter.  Curious though, that with his below average LD rate, this is the case.  So his hard hit% is driven by either hard contact on fly balls or ground balls relative to league average.  Since he has an IFFB% above league average I’m going to predict that he’s a high authority GB hitter.  There’s logic in that, right?

He’s right at about league average for hard hit fly balls, but he does seem to have a hard hit ground ball percentage markedly higher than league average.  In fact, his 23.1% hard hit GB rate is 18th best in the league.  The 17 players in front of him have combined for an average line of:

The list also includes names like Tulo, Miguel Cabrera, Posey, Pederson, Upton, Donaldson, Trout, Jose Abreu, and Yoenis Cespedes.  It’s guys that we generally perceive to be hard contact hitters, or I guess, more specifically, power hitters.  But he’s 18th on the list and produced a quality hard hit ground ball rate last year, too.

But, he still has a league average hard hit fly ball rate and a below average line drive rate.  These are reflected in his numbers compared to the league.

Lastly, he plays in Chase Field, which, throughout its history, has been a hitters park.  From 2008-2014 it had an adjusted park factor of +111.  For right handed hitters (and left handed hitters) like A.J. Pollock, it has had only positive affects, but this table is solely for righties:

Put Pollock in a neutral park and his numbers for the last 162 games would theoretically look like this:

I was kind of hoping to see more signs that Pollock is experiencing more luck.  Not because I don’t like Pollock, I love him as a baseball player and I’m sure he’s a fine person, but because of the questions regarding the sustainability of his play in the first half of the 2015 season by many of my peers.  The answer to, “is he really this good”, is that he is pretty darn close and I can see him performing to any of the projection systems’ expectations the rest of the way (ZiPS, Steamer, or Depth Charts).  He should experience some fluctuation in BABIP because of his GB rate, but so far he really hasn’t – and again that’s partially due to the authority with which he hits them.

In terms of finding a player closest in comparison to Pollock, Marte might be a pretty decent choice.  If I can just brainstorm using the cloud technique, I would probably have, with A.J. Pollock’s name in the middle: Starling Marte, Jason Heyward, Christian Yelich, Charlie Blackmon, Brett Gardner, and Lorenzo Cain as smaller clouds extending off the big, middle cloud.  Here are stats based on the last 162 games played.

This group kind of works as a spectrum.  I see the players on the extreme north and south columns least like Pollock and the players in the middle most like Pollock.  There is no one player to compare A.J. Pollock with that is playing currently, although Mitch Webster would be a pretty good historical comparison using his ages 26 – 28 seasons.

Mitch Webster ages 26-28 162 G AVG:

Probably too high of a walk rate, but that looks pretty good.

The average season of the group above would look like this:

A little too high of a K rate, but that also looks pretty good.

And finally A.J. Pollock ages 25-27 162 G AVG

In conclusion, A.J. Pollock is very close to this good if he’s not actually THIS GOOD and I think these players are pretty good comparisons.  And hopefully Pollock has more long lasting success than Mitch Webster.  In a time when speed/power combo players are in decline, what Pollock is doing is clearly elite in that sense.  What I really would like to see would be the history of authoritative ground ball hitters with good speed who have played in parks that have buoyed their power numbers.  Unfortunately, I don’t have access to batted ball profiles for hitters throughout history – how many Pollocks does it take to gather that information?