There is, however, a bullpen-boosting trade out there that doesn’t involve Rafael Devers or Jackie Bradley Jr in Baltimore: old friend Brad Ziegler!

Ziegler, as you surely remember, pitched — and well! — for the Red Sox over about 30 innings in 2016. He posted a 1.52 ERA, 2.71 FIP and a career-best 16.1 percent strikeout-to-walk ratio while with Boston. He left for Miami that offseason (can’t really fault him there) and it hasn’t gone as well since. In the last two years, Ziegler’s posted 5.06 ERA, 4.22 FIP and a 6.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Maybe the best news of this hypothetical trade is that it’d cost the Red Sox next to nothing. Ziegler’s a tier or two down from the top and it’s quite the buyer’s market this year — Kelvin Herrera went to Washington for their 10th- and 11th-best prospects.

A reunion would immediately bring the Red Sox something their bullpen is mightily lacking with — a ground ball guy. Ziegler’s getting grounders at a 72 percent clip, which ranks 2nd of all qualified relievers. The Red Sox best ground ball pitcher is currently Matt Barnes, who gets them at a 55 percent clip.

If you’re worried about some of his other peripherals, I don’t blame you. The amount of hard contact he’s allowing skyrocketed from 28 percent last year to nearly 42 percent. He’s already allowed a career-high six home runs this year. There are some red flags.

The good news is that of late, he’s been better. This piece on his resurgence breaks it down nicely – Ziegler’s suffered from some bad luck and worse defense. Since being taken out of the closer’s role, Ziegler has collected seven holds and allowed only two runs in 21 innings pitched.

That’s great news for the Red Sox, who clearly don’t need a closer. I’d hear an argument that they don’t really need a set-up guy this season either, regardless of what my eyes and heart and last three years of evidence tell me. The back-end of the bullpen can be terrifying at times, but it’s worked so far. Brad Hand or Zach Britton would be awesome, sure, but having a not-barren farm system is awesome as well.

The team doesn’t need Ziegler to save or anchor the bullpen, unlike in Miami where he’s spent time as both the set-up guy and the closer. His stellar performance since returning to a middle-innings guy is encouraging, and the idea of the Red Sox having another strong mid-innings guy with an elite ground ball rate is a tantalizing one.

Christian Vazquez has suffered a broken right pinky finger and will need surgery, and the timeline for recovery from that is roughly six-to-eight weeks. With him out of the game, Sandy Leon will take the lion’s share of starts behind home plate, which leaves the position of backup catcher to the seldom-used Blake Swihart. For Swihart to actually see somewhat consistent time behind home plate — time that doesn’t involve him as a late-game replacement or as someone to catch warm-up pitches while either Vazquez or Leon gets their pads on — is actually surprising. From the beginning of the season, it was tough to visualize Swihart getting triple-digit innings actually, y’know, catching for a pitcher.

While this is something of a testament to the depth the Red Sox have, they really shouldn’t be getting much credit for it. If the Red Sox actually saw Swihart as a catcher first, they would’ve realized the redundancy of holding three catchers a long time before now. Instead, he’s been tried out at the corner infield positions and still run him out for a handful of innings in left field — a move that evokes flashbacks to how his 2016 season ended. So it would be stretching the truth to say the Red Sox saw him as a catcher first and not (however optimistically) a utility player coming off the bench. Swihart’s been taking up the 24th spot on the roster because the Red Sox ran out of options for him, and feel that he’s too valuable to let go, especially when his value is as low as it is. In that regard, they’re correct.

But the idea that the Red Sox kept Swihart as preparation for a Vazquez or Leon injury is naïve at best, and blind loyalty at worst. Third-string catchers can be had for a bucket of baseballs, and hell, Dan Butler is still on Pawtucket’s roster. He’d work just fine as a backup to the backup. Swihart’s there because the Red Sox thought his talent was too good to let go, not because the catcher tandem they had was somehow injury-prone. Catchers get nicked and dinged all year long, but outside of needing Tommy John surgery a few years ago, Vazquez wasn’t ever bitten by an injury bug until now. It’s simply bad luck for Vazquez, and a renewed chance to catch for Swihart. These things simply happen. But that’s enough fiery distrust of the Red Sox for one article.

Now we get to see what Blake Swihart is like when he actually plays catcher consistently, and quite frankly, this has been something long overdue from the former top prospect. Maybe there’s some post-post-sleeper hype in here, or maybe the talent doesn’t translate to productive skill. He’s got two months to show it, at the very least.

If we look at offensive production from the catcher position, the needle doesn’t really change much with Leon and Swihart. Neither Vazquez nor Swihart were offensive juggernauts, and the Red Sox were getting a combined .600 OPS from the position, good for 26th in the league. The bar’s set pretty low, all things considered. Going by history, Swihart’s supposedly a better hitter than Vazquez, so there’s a chance we could see a spark there. But that history is sourced from the last time he’s played a full season — over four years ago. Since 2015, Swihart’s had only 930 plate appearances in professional baseball. Outside of the second half of 2015, he’s had neither health nor consistency of playing time since then. I guess what I’m saying is that he’s one hell of a wild card when it comes to what he’ll do at the plate. He’s probably going to be mediocre, but I’m always here for a happy tale of an oft-injured player exceeding expectations and making it in big leagues. Expect little, but hope for a lot.

Defensively, well, things are a little more concrete there. Vazquez, as per usual, is an excellent defender, while Swihart has had issues with defending going back to his low minors days. He’s not a butcher, but calling him above average behind the plate is a little too optimistic for my tastes. Let’s just put this one down as “probably not going to be as good” and move on.

Look, you should be at least a little happy he’s going to get more time in the field at his original position, regardless of how or why he ended up in this situation. I’m definitely intrigued by it, and you should be too. He desperately needs the consistent playing time, and if that talent is still there, that might be all he needs. These next two months might just be Swihart’s only chance to stick with the Red Sox, and work his way back into their future plans, no matter how small or large that role might be.

Header photo courtesy of Troy Taormina — USA TODAY Sports

In one of the biggest — and quite frankly, most helpful — surprises of the Red Sox’ first half, it certainly does seem like Brock Holt is actually good again. He’s hitting .298/.370/.433 with a .802 OPS, good for a .299 TAv. That also happens to be the best TAv of his career, up 85 points from his (admittedly disappointing) 2017 campaign.

The thing that jumps off the page is just how good Holt’s been this year. He’s not just improving on last year’s dismal numbers — he’s legitimately been a very, very good MLB player through the first eight weeks of the season.

Any discussion of Holt’s resurgence should probably start with his health. Head injuries are gravely serious, and Holt’s concussion struggles last year sounded like absolute hell. At one point, he was apparently advised to play through the symptoms which — and I’m no doctor — seems like a terrible idea? They were bad enough to keep him out for large chunks of 2017, and he only ended up 164 plate appearances. Some context: he’s already at 107 plate appearances this year.

Being clear of the constant struggles that come with concussions must feel like new life for Holt. He certainly looks approximately one billion times happier this year.

On the field, however, it’s not immediately clear what, if any, adjustments he’s made. His batted-ball profile isn’t dramatically different — there’s some slight variation in the three types of contact he’s making, but nothing in the range of more than four percentage points. His exit velocity (86.2) has stayed consistent with what it’s always been, and his launch angle is still laughably low. In a time when it seems like any and every hitter’s resurgence is tied to putting the ball in the air, Holt is defying that norm.

One thing that is clear is that he’s been much more patient at the plate. He’s drawing walks at a 10 percent clip and while that’s slightly down from last year (11.6), it’s still only the second time in his career that his walk rate is in the double digits. He’s also cut his strikeouts down significantly, lowering his strikeout rate six percentage points from last season. If he stays steady at 14 percent, it would represent the best clip since 2013, when he only appeared in 26 games. For all intents and purposes, Holt is having the most disciplined year of his career at the plate.

Because I’m devoid of any real joy, I’ll point out there are some things to be wary about. Holt’s running a .345 BABIP right now, significantly higher than the league average of .294. The good news is that Holt’s always been a high-BABIP type of guy, posting better than league-average BABIP marks in four of his seven seasons. And even with a career .325 clip in that department, his current pace is more than likely not sustainable. There’s also the fact that Holt’s notoriously a first-half hitter. For his career, he’s slashed .295/.362/.416 with a .780 OPS in the first half and .238/.300/.310 with a .611 OPS in the second. Not once has he ever had a better second half offensively in any given year than he had in the first. Health aside, there’s most likely a dip coming.

We’ll cross that bridge when we get there though. Brock Holt is good again, and watching him fly around the field hugging people has been one of the biggest joys of what’s been a pretty fun season so far. Brock Holt is good again? Brock Holt is good again.

April wasn’t the best month for Benny. He couldn’t get anything in the air (44 percent groundball rate) nor could he do anything with the fly balls he did hit (3.7 percent HR/FB rate), and those two teamed up to bring about Stone Age levels of power from the outfielder. Compounding this was the fact that Benintendi seemed more passive than patient at the plate to begin with. It’s not a bad thing to take pitches, not at all — it’s a bad thing when you’re taking hittable pitches, much less pitches you can drive. It’s nice that your OBP is .350, but with context like, say, an OPS of .740, it doesn’t look so pristine. That was his reality in April. Nothing looked terrible, just mediocre. But mediocre is a disappointment for someone with Benintendi’s potential, especially after what he had shown over the last eight-to-nine months of baseball in the major leagues.

It was more than a little worrying at first, especially when it came to thinking about how the season would go — the Red Sox could certainly boast that they had the best outfield unit in the majors, sure, but when Jackie Bradley Jr. can’t hit and Benintendi looks more content with passivity than action in his plate appearances, it definitely doesn’t look that way, no matter how many dingers J.D. Martinez and Mookie Betts combine for. When it came to the offense, no one really expected Bradley to hit, but Benintendi? He needed to hit, as a very polished 23-year-old who just had a 20-20 season. The defense, though? Still good. Baserunning? Still a dumpster fire. At least those two aspects stayed that way, so you knew what you were getting with those.

But here we are on June 12th, and no one’s worried anymore.

Benintendi was a force of nature in May, pulling off a stunning rebound from his docile April self. He got a lot more balls in the air (45 percent fly ball rate), did more damage with them (14 percent HR/FB rate), and damn near doubled his power output, seeing his Isolated Power mark rise from .174 to .284. Statcast is still a huge fan of his, as he’s now 17th in the league in average exit velocity, and his 18 barrels are good for 8th. That homer above? That was a barreled baseball that got sent 437 feet. Benintendi is hitting something classified as “hard-hit” over 33 percent of the time. On average, every third batted ball is smoked. The kid is alright, it seems.

I’d like to say there was a deeper, number-crunching analysis of why he’s doing so well now as compared to the first month of the season, but he’s simply hitting the ball harder again, and not taking as many of the pitches he’s now crushing. Being a good hitter isn’t just waiting for a pitch — it’s also capitalizing on that pitch once you get it, be it a fastball in the wheelhouse or a slider that just won’t slide all the way across. Benintendi seems to have realized that, and has proceeded to make good contact and drive the ball once again. It’s not like this sudden surge of excellence was unexpected either, since his exit velocity and launch angle have been steadily increasing per season. He’s steadily upped the exit velo at least one mile per hour for each year he’s been in the majors, and his launch angle has been trending upwards as well. Take a look, y’all:

This is what Benintendi’s launch angle looked like 2017. Not a ton of hits in the 10-to-30 degree range, but the whole team had power issues last year, so he’s not alone in that. In 2018, however, he’s brought the rain:

That’s more like it. He’s getting some loud, hard contact in there now, and it’s starting to show.

Not only is the quality of the contact improving, everything else is coming along with it. Remember that passivity I talked about? Well, now he’s walking 12 percent of the time again, and he’s kept up the power numbers while doing that. June’s numbers are squarely in the small sample size camp, but you can’t help but be giddy when you see that beautiful .390 ISO under Benintendi’s name for the month. He’s back, and better than ever.

The best part is that even with his recent surge, he’s not really at risk of some regression. The vast majority of what he’s done and currently doing is pretty sustainable for him. His BABIP recently has been fairly normal, and his HR/FB rate isn’t some gaudy 25 percent or anything — it’s just a couple percentage points above what he did last year. Compared to last year, the one thing he’s done substantially more of is swing more often at pitches in the zone, which, considering his last six weeks, has been a boon so far.

Maybe Benintendi’s just a slow starter. We haven’t seen enough of his Aprils to really know. But it sure is nice to have him back on track to being that outfielder we thought he could be. There are few things sweeter in baseball than a smooth, left-handed swing, and seeing Benintendi’s knock a few baseballs over the fence again just makes it that much better.

Header photo by Tommy Gilligan — USA TODAY Sports

We all know that Moreland has been playing well and the desire to get him more playing time certainly factored into the decision to designate Hanley Ramirez for assignment on May 25th. What is shocking is just how good Moreland has been when you look at his numbers. Moreland is leading all American League first basemen with a .313 True Average while slashing .292/.355/.606. If you’re curious, that .606 slugging percentage is the best in the entire league among first basemen. Moreland has done this while being an above average defender at the position, placing him second in the AL in WARP at 0.83.

The only player ahead of Moreland in WARP is Jose Abreu, who is in the midst of another typical Abreu-like season with a WARP of 0.86. Since Ramirez was just recently designated for assignment, and received ample playing time before said transaction, Moreland had only appeared in 43 games this year, while Abreu has played in 54. Despite playing fewer games, they both have nine home runs on the season, and Abreu has just three more RBI, with 31. Moreland has been more effective on a game-by-game basis, has played better defense, and his .403 wOBA is clearly ahead of Abreu’s mark of .373. With Miguel Cabrera and Justin Smoak having down years, and Edwin Encarnacion only playing seven games at first base, the vote will surely come down to these two.

Like it or not, the fans have the vote in the All-Star game, and the Red Sox, by holding the best record in baseball, have drawn far more attention than the second-to-worst record amassed by the White Sox. It’s a little harsh to say, but few fans care about the White Sox right now. Abreu is wasted on that team, and likely won’t get the support he deserves when it comes to the voting. Should Abreu be traded to a contending team before the All-Star break, this could change, however, as popularity and success matter.

If Moreland does make the team it will be deserved, but it doesn’t mean he is anything close to the best first baseman in baseball. The National League side features Freedie Freeman, Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Rizzo, Brandon Belt, Eric Hosmer, and Cody Bellinger, just to name a few. There are going to be some very deserving first basemen that don’t even make that roster as a reserve. By TAv, Moreland is behind Belt, Freeman, and Jesus Aguilar, and ahead of Goldy, Rizzo, Votto, and the rest. If he makes the team as a starter, this will not be a Brock Holt: 2015 All-Star situation.

The Statcast numbers back up what Moreland has been achieving this year, and show some real meaningful change. His average exit velocity is 93.6 mph, which is far and away better than his previous best of 91.4 mph in 2015, and up significantly from 89.1 mph last year. Moreland is making harder contact more frequently than ever before, posting a 53.3 percent hard-hit rate and a career-best barrels percentage at 13.3. Much of this has come from Moreland pulling the ball more than ever, at 49.5 percent of the time — up from 37.2 percent last season. Can he keep this up? Who knows? What we do know is that Moreland is swinging at more pitches in the zone than ever before at 72.5 percent, and is doing damage on those pitches.

His two-year, 13-million-dollar deal is looking more and more like a bargain, and an excellent investment on the part of Dave Dombrowski. This contract is a welcome departure from Pablo Sandoval, Ramirez, and Rusney Castillo, and for a deal that was largely panned coming into the season, Mitch Moreland has gone so far beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Header photo by Brian Fluharty — USA TODAY Sports

• First of all, he’s a much better hitter than what I thought. That’s presumably my fault for not following the career of Adam Lind closely enough, but baseball just has so many players. His career slash line is .272/.330/.465 with a .795 OPS. In fact, Lind has never had a slugging percentage below league average. That goes for his ISO as well. For a bench bat, that’ll play just fine.
• He’s coming off one of the best seasons of his career, in which he hit .303/.362/.513 over 301 plate appearances with the Washington Nationals. I saw a dozen or so games at Nats Park last season, and can confirm he was good.
• After his great 2013 season, Lind was slowly but surely making worse contact. In that 2013 campaign, he made hard contact 40 percent of the time. Since then, Lind’s hard-hit percentage came in at 37 percent, 37 percent, and 36 percent. Last year, he got that number right back up to 40 percent (technically 39.4, but whatever). It was the second-best hard-hit percentage of his career, so there’s hope that Lind’s coming into this year in a good spot at the plate.
• I guess you don’t want to go into the summer with Blake Swihart as your primary backup first basemen, but boy, the Red Sox continue to do a number on him. He got a semi-vote of confidence when they chose to designate Hanley Ramirez for assignment (even if that was more a financial decision than a vote of confidence in Swihart), and then immediately turn around and bring in an established player that will presumably take his spot without much effort. Free Blake Swihart.
• Lind’s defense is… something. Whether you’re a DRS person or a UZR person or anywhere in between, this is one example of when defensive numbers actually do tell a pretty complete story. It’ll be interesting to see what, if any, effect that has on Cora and Co.’s decision to pinch hit him late in important games.
• Spending the better part of a decade with the Toronto Blue Jays, he’s no stranger to playing in Boston. At Fenway Park, Lind has a career average of .294/.322/.495 with a .817 OPS. He’s played 56 games there and has 11 doubles, two triples (!!) and eight home runs in 205 plate appearances — good for a career .201 ISO. His power plays at Fenway, even as a left-handed hitter.
• Dusty Baker once spent a significant portion of a post-game press conference referring to him as Jeremy Lin, which is extremely on-brand for ol’ Dusty.

If I were a betting man (and soon I might be, shout out to SCOTUS), I’d wager that Lind finds his way on to the major league roster sooner rather than later. The team is clearly not interested in Blake Swihart, and your Brock-Holt’s-a-firstbaseman-if-he-has-to-be ideas are not welcome here. Hell, the Red Sox could get real weird and DH him occasionally. There’s unquestionably a late-August getaway game start at DH in Lind’s future. Probably in Tampa.

Header photo by Derik Hamilton — USA TODAY Sports

Pomeranz started the season on the disabled list, as he suffered a forearm flexor strain in mid-March. He returned on April 20th, after a couple sub-par rehab outings in Triple-A, to pitch against the Oakland Athletics. It wasn’t a glorious return — Pomeranz lasted 3.2 innings, allowed three runs, and didn’t look like he had much of his command or his normal velocity. Since then, he’s been… well, the best description of his 2018 season is a dejected shrug. He’s been fairly unremarkable ever since, and at times his starts have been the visual equivalent of someone dragging their nails across a chalkboard. It should come as no surprise that his next start, which would’ve been today, was pushed back to Saturday against the Atlanta Braves.

Last year, I wrote about how Drew Pomeranz is an underrated pitcher, and how he was much better than people perceived him to be. He turned in a solid 2.6 WARP in 2017, and was more or less a constant in a rotation that had Chris Sale, the bad version of Rick Porcello, and the occasional good start from Doug Fister. In 2018, he’s been anything but, the far-and-away worst starter currently in the rotation, and looking solely at results thus far, the worst starter the Red Sox have, period.

You’d expect some rust coming back from a forearm injury, sure, but he’s had six starts in the majors so far, and he’s looked like a mess. The velocity loss is the most notable sign, as it’s nowhere close to where it was last year.

Apart from the changeup, which isn’t one of his main pitches, everything’s a good two to three mph slower than his norms. It’s more than a bit concerning, especially for a guy with Pomeranz’s injury record.

But he keeps on pitching, sharply diminished velocity and all, and both he and the Red Sox insist he’s health. If you’re a devout pessimist like me, this looks like a perfect, eminently frustrating storm combining a potentially scary injury and deep-seated distrust of the Red Sox medical staff, who have had a near-annual debacle concerning an injured player and their ability to play. While a forearm issue isn’t as scary as something like a shoulder, it could be a prelude to something like a UCL injury in his elbow. Thankfully, it wasn’t, but that doesn’t solve the mystery of the missing velocity or his mediocre production.

Again, both parties say he’s fit as a fiddle. But it does put the Red Sox in a little bit of a bind. As he is now, Pomeranz is a serviceable number four in any rotation, but that’s not how Pomeranz had been pitching the last two seasons, and it’s not like he’s at the far right side of the aging curve — he’s just 29 years old.  They can’t conceivably take him out of the rotation either, since that means giving either Hector Velazquez or Brian Johnson starts, and even with the success they’ve had coming out of the bullpen (and starting this year), having them start for an extended amount of time is asking for trouble. I’m not talking 2011 bad, where the Red Sox ran out guys like Kyle Weiland and an awful, definitely-injured John Lackey down the stretch, but bad enough where you’d actually want this version of Drew Pomeranz to stay. A Pomeranz that resembles anything like last season’s iteration makes this rotation fearsome. The current version downgrades the rotation to simply spooky. Still really good, but not great.

Fortunately, there might be light at the end of the tunnel. Pomeranz told Michael Silverman of the Boston Herald that he might’ve found and potentially fixed what had been the cause of his awfulness. This isn’t the first time he’s had a dramatic uptick in production after a mechanical change — in mid-May of last year, he mentioned everything finally starting to click after a start that month, and went on to be the second-best starter in that rotation. It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that everything changes on Saturday, but, against my better judgement, it does get my hopes up.

There’s nothing that can be done until we see how he does on Saturday. If he’s good, all of this is just water under the bridge. If not, and he’s seemingly corrected that mechanical problem, the concern will start to grow. Pomeranz says he’s healthy, and the Red Sox have given him the green light to pitch. So until anything changes — for better or worse — we’ve just got to wait and see, and hope Pomeranz is better than this.

Header photo by Bob DeChiara — USA TODAY Sports

So how are the Red Sox lining up on defense? How do they compare against not only other teams, but their own teammates? Let’s take a look.

LEFT FIELD

In left, Benintendi’s and J.D. Martinez’s positioning is pretty similar. And when I say pretty similar, what I mean is that it is almost completely identical. Here’s how they look:

Don’t waste your time squinting and trying to decipher the two. You will get a headache from staring at the screen, not be able to fall asleep, and I don’t want that on my conscience.

On a larger scale, the Red Sox play a shallow left field. The average left fielder plays at a depth of 294 ft. Martinez plays at 290 feet, and Benintendi sets up shop at 289. Of 52 players who have been in left for at least 100 plate appearances, only Cincinnati’s Jesse Winkler plays a more shallow left field than Benintendi. That’s a not-insignificant difference, but then you remember that there’s a gigantic green wall in left field at Fenway Park and things start to make some more sense. There’s no gigantic green wall in Cincinnati, so I’m not really sure what Winkler’s excuse is.

CENTER FIELD

Here’s where it gets a little more interesting. Benintendi and JBJ are the only qualified centerfielders for the Sox, and their position could not be any more different:

For starters, you can see two dots! That is encouraging. As you might have guessed, that shallow dot is Andrew Benintendi. While the average centerfielder plays at 316 feet, Benintendi lines up at 308. Once again, it is the second-most shallow position of any qualified center fielder, this time behind the White Sox’ Adam Engel. Whether it’s his choice or something the coaches are telling him, it’s fascinating to see that Benintendi plays one of the most shallow outfields in baseball.

The deeper dot, obviously, is Jackie Bradley Jr. He still plays more shallow than the average center fielder, with JBJ settling in at 312 feet. Of the 48 qualified CF’s, JBJ’s depth puts him at 38. It gets even more interesting when you turn the calendar back a year and see that in 2017, he was setting up at 326 feet. He’s playing nearly five yards more shallow this season, which seems… dramatic.

Worried about the Red Sox shallow-playing tendencies? Don’t be. If you take a look at who JBJ is grouped with, you’ll notice names like Engel, Buxton, Marisnick, and Hamilton. What do all those names have in common? All four are in the top half of MLB’s fastest center fielders. In fact, Buxton, Engel, and Hamilton make up three of the top four. You can’t teach speed, and the wheels that the aforementioned players posses allow them to cheat in a little more than others normally would. If anything, it should be noted how impressive it is that Bradley plays a shallow center field with positionally-average speed. He doesn’t need the game-changing speed that the other players at his depth do to make the same catches.

JBJ also plays the ball as straight up as straight up can be. Of those 48 qualified CFs, only three set up at an exact zero-degree angle. I’m not entirely sure how important that actually is, but being only one of three fielders to do it seems noteworthy. To be honest I’m not sure any Red Sox fan cares what angle he lines up at if he keeps making absurd diving catches once every two innings.

RIGHT FIELD

Since there’s only one qualified Red Sox right fielder, here’s how Mookie Betts lines up against the rest of baseball:

Considering how cavernous Fenway’s right field is, it’s fascinating that Betts plays so shallow and center. He sets up at 279 feet, far far below the MLB average of 293. He also shades farther into center field than any other right fielder in baseball, standing at a 25 degree angle. The only other player that comes close to that is San Diego’s Travis Jankowski, who makes up for his dramatic angle by playing the deepest right field in baseball. Whatever the reasoning is, it’s working for Mookie. Betts currently ranks sixth in baseball with five outs above average. His Catch Percentage Added sits right at six percent, which is good for 11th-best in baseball. Add in the rest of what he’s doing this year, and Mookie can do whatever he wants and line up wherever he wants. He’ll still get the job done.

Header photo by Richard Mackson — USA TODAY Sports

Martinez also leads the MLB in BABIP (batting average on balls in play), the infamous harbinger of regression, with a .402 mark. A BABIP in the .400s almost always signifies oncoming regression, but Martinez may avoid that because he’s hitting the ball hard more often than any other player and he’s been spraying the ball across fields.

Let’s also recognize that while .402 is a crazy high BABIP, it’s down from .427 just a week ago. The dip didn’t affect his counting numbers at all. In that week, Martinez racked up nine hits, five homers and eight RBI.

Martinez’s standard numbers aren’t dipping with his BABIP in part because he hits the ball very hard, very often. According to MLB.com Statcast data, Martinez hits the ball 95 mph or higher 59.1 percent of the time, the top mark in the MLB. He also hits the ball with an average exit velocity of 95.8 miles per hour, good for fourth in baseball behind Joey Gallo, Aaron Judge and Miguel Cabrera.

Additionally, Martinez barrels the ball up in 14.9 percent of his plate appearances, second in baseball only to teammate Mookie Betts (15.6). His line drive percentage is 23.6, on pace for his career-high for a full season.

In short, he hits the ball really hard. But also, he doesn’t hit the ball soft. This might seem redundant at first, but seriously, his soft-contact rate is glaringly low compared to the rest of the league. I included Betts in the chart to show some perspective.

Courtesy: Baseball Info Solutions

This means that Martinez is hitting the ball at a medium- or hard-contact rate over 95 percent of the time he makes contact.

Not only is the 30-year-old outfielder hitting the ball hard, he’s hitting them to the opposite field, too. Now, I won’t say all fields, because he’s not hitting it into centerfield as much, but his opposite-field percentage (36.2) is second in baseball to Cincinnati’s Scooter Gennett (37.7). Over the last couple of years, Martinez has steadily leveled out his field distribution.

Martinez’s opposite-field percentage took a five percent leap in his career year last season, when he batted .303 with 45 home runs and 104 RBI. The percentage has seen yet a larger increase in 2018, where he’s on pace to eclipse all three of those figures.

And while Martinez’s BABIP is high, that figure can be neutralized with sky-high hard contact numbers and effective field distribution: two figures that display much more skill than luck. If Martinez continues to hit the ball hard and spray his hits, he’ll likely be able to avoid regression and surpass his outstanding 2017 campaign.

Price has always been a remarkably durable pitcher as well, which was another reason the team didn’t hesitate to sign him entering his 30s. From 2012 to 2016, his first year with the Red Sox, he led all starters with 1096.1 IP. While his ERA suffered a bit in his first year with the Red Sox (due to allowing a career high 30 home runs), the underlying numbers were still elite, and his pitch mix looked consistent with a successful David Price. A 3.99 ERA wasn’t ideal, but coupled with elite ratios and a league leading 230 IP, there was no reason to be anything but optimistic. Then 2017 happened.

The year started off poorly from the jump, with forearm soreness in March becoming an elbow strain by April. After returning from the DL, Price was not himself. He hit the DL again with elbow inflammation in late July. Red Sox fans and the team feared the worst — Tommy John surgery. MRIs came back clean on Price’s elbow, and he returned to pitch an electric postseason as a reliever. Optimism was abound entering 2018, but if you looked closer about how Price had been using his pitches in 2017 and 2018, maybe we should have known better. 

From 2012 to 2016, Price had a repertoire which was roughly 70 percent fastballs — a variation of sinkers, cutters, and four-seamers. Price also threw his curveball about 10 percent of the time while mixing in his changeup for the remaining 20 percent. Over those years, the fastball variations had dipped in usage along with the curveball and the changeup gaining usage, but even still all those pitches were being thrown with regularity. Since 2017, the fastball usage rose to about 80 percent, with the curveball and changeup seeing reduced usage. So far in 2018, Price has used his changeup just three percent of the time and is throwing his changeup 17 percent of the time. Price has essentially become a pitcher without a breaking offering.

Can Price succeed like this? Yeah, it’s very possible that he can, but it’s a lot more difficult to do so, because it makes him more predictable and he needs to have pinpoint command to make it work. He did so in his last outing against Baltimore throwing just one curveball. It’s also the opposite of what most pitchers do as they age and lose velocity. If you look at the Brooks Baseball page for Zack Greinke or Justin Verlander, you’ll see that most elite aging pitchers throw more breaking and off-speed pitches to account for diminished velocity and a slimmer margin for error on hard pitches. He is currently averaging about 91.5 mph on his hard pitches. Price is trying to defy this traditional wisdom and is not having success. As you can see, his DRA has risen drastically since he began throwing more hard pitches. Currently, he is not the pitcher the Red Sox thought they were getting.

After this year, Price has the opportunity to opt out and test the market. It’s no secret that he’s had an adversarial relationship with the Boston media, and has said his share of bizarre things. Price wants to be loved, but doesn’t seem to be able to get out of his own way when he speaks, or pitch well enough that what he says doesn’t matter. It will be a hard decision for Price to make, as he will need to consider what he’s worth on the market and how much his happiness is worth to him. If he continues pitching like he is, coupled with his diminished velocity, then he isn’t likely to find success. Price needs to throw his curveball more and increase his changeup usage if he wants a chance of proving to other teams he is still valuable. This is his only hope to leave Boston without having to have a very awkward conversation with a talk show host someday about why he walked away from all that money. If he doesn’t change and decides to stay, we are going to hate this contract more and more every year.       

Header photo by Winslow Townson — USA TODAY Sports