If you’re looking for All-Star snubs and surprises, we have them for you.

In order to understand the best and worst of the 2018 MLB All-Star Game rosters, as presented by Some Rando on the Internet, you have to know where that rando stands on some key All-Star issues.

The most important thing to remember about the All-Star Game is this: It’s better with players having brilliant careers. There’s a kid who attended the 1975 All-Star Game and remembers how the County Stadium crowd roared for a limping, aging Hank Aaron. There is absolutely no kid who remembers being angry that Leroy Stanton wasn’t rewarded for his stellar first half. Heck, Stanton’s kid was probably thrilled, considering he or she got to hang out with his or her dad in the summer for once. Always go for the Hank Aarons over the Leroy Stantons.

If Jesus Aguilar is really this good, he’ll be closer to the Aaron threshold, and he’ll make an All-Star team several times in the future.

If he’s not, we’ll look back at All-Star nods for Joey Votto and Paul Goldschmidt in 20 years — the little “AS” next to their names on Baseball-Reference — and think, yeah, that makes sense. We won’t think about the Leroy Stanton-ish first half of Aguilar almost getting the nod.

And always, always, always, remember that in a month, you won’t remember 80 percent of the All-Star roster, and you certainly won’t care.

When in doubt, though, go for the player who will make the Hall of Fame, has won an MVP, or will come reasonably close to doing both. It’s the only way to make sure that you’re not overreacting to eight hot weeks.

With that in mind, here are my bests and worsts from the 2018 MLB All-Star rosters:

Best: Nick Markakis and Shin-soo Choo making their first teams

Ah, it’s easy to draw a line in the sand when talking about HANK AARON, but what about the players who spend their careers merely helping their teams win, over and over again? Where is their reward? Of the position players who have never made an All-Star Game in the All-Star era, Shin-soo Choo is the seventh-most valuable according to WAR, and Nick Markakis might be the 10th-most valuable before the end of this week. They’ve probably deserved to go at some point.

It probably says an awful lot that only the die-hardiest of the die-hard Reds and Orioles fans can rattle off the specific snubs.

They’re here, though. Finally. It’s like they were competing in a contest to have as many good-but-not-that-good first halves in a lengthy, memorable career, and then both caved at the same time. They’ll finally get their moment in the sun.

I often think of a piece that Steven Goldman wrote years ago for this site, in which he compared Hunter Pence to Edna Ferber. It wasn’t a slight. It was just a note that the players who might seem like immortal titans we’ll never forget ... probably aren’t.

I don’t want to belabor Ferber except to say that there are people who are massively famous in their time and then vanish as newer stuff gets piled on top of them.

This is probably the fate of Markakis and Choo. The kids today don’t appreciate them, dagnabbit. The kids tomorrow won’t even know who they are.

But they’ll line up on the first- or third-base line next week and take off their hats as people cheer. That’s pretty cool. And they’ve earned it.

Worst: Andrelton Simmons not making the team

Fun fact: Of the players who haven’t made an All-Star team, Simmons also might be in the top 10 in WAR before the week is over. Except he’s just 28 and in the prime of his career.

Which means he’s a helluva lot closer to Aaron than he is to Markakis and Choo.

This is mostly a numbers game, what with the American League being filthy rotten with supremely talented shortstops. But if we’re going to list the players we’d want to watch for 30 minutes at a time, Simmons is high up on it. He’s turned himself into one of the greatest contact hitters in a sport that’s forgetting how to make them, and he’s continuing to be one of the greatest defenders ever at his position. Maybe he’ll make it through the final vote or as an injury replacement.

But if our position is that the All-Star Game is for the historically brilliant players in Major League Baseball, where in the heck has Simmons been for his entire historically brilliant career?

Best: Miles Mikolas making the team

Mikolas has thrown 109 innings this year. He’s made 17 starts. He’s firmly in the “maybe things will be different his second time around the league” territory. He’s recorded an out in the eighth inning just once this season, and it was in a complete-game shutout against the Royals, which shouldn’t count. If I’m going to blather about how Jesus Aguilar shouldn’t make it over Goldschmidt and Votto, I should probably use 700 words to complain about how Mikols made it over, I don’t know, Jake Arrieta.

Except I’m a sucker for stories about players who were cast adrift and needed to travel around the world for us to appreciate them. Like Cecil Fielder and Eric Thames before him, Mikolas needed to reinvent himself somewhere else before anyone paid attention. And while I’d rather watch Clayton Kershaw— injury-marred season and all — in the All-Star Game, that doesn’t mean a raffle ticket like this isn’t a fun story.

I’ll be right back here next year to write the same thing about Randy Messenger, too.

Best: The players’ picks

Damn straight.

Nearly all of the worst screw-ups can be traced back to the players’ picks, which is something of a problem for my thesis. When people are mad about snubs, they’re really mad about the players’ picks.

Why is Joe Jimenez on the roster as the Tigers’ representative instead of Nick Castellanos, who is actually something close to the face of that franchise now? Because of the every-team-gets-a-rep rule, yes, but also because the players chose George Springer, a scuffling outfielder who plays for a team that didn’t need that rule. That’s what hurt Castellanos, which forced Jimenez on the roster, which pushed the AL ERA leader, Blake Snell, off.

If you think this is being too hard on Springer, who just might be the kind of all-world talent that the game is designed for, then you could pick on Michael Brantley, who is probably one tier below the Choos and Markakii of the world, but also made the team last year and probably doesn’t need more help.

It’s all a mess, if you’re a believer in the best-first-half philosophy of All-Star rosters, and you can blame the players.

The players, up and down the roster, made defensible picks, though. That defense is they’re paying less attention to the random, unexpected first halves than the fans are. They’ve heard of Charlie Blackmon and have watched him beat up on their teams for years, whereas players who aren’t in the NL Central have no idea what Aguilar is capable of. So they vote for the guy who almost won the MVP last year.

That’s very much in line with what I’ve been grumbling about, dammit. This is good. They don’t know it, but they’re actually agreeing with some nerd pounding on his keyboard.

Here’s a list of the National League players selected by their peers:

• Buster Posey
• Joey Votto
• Ozzie Albies
• Eugenio Suarez
• Trevor Story
• Christian Yelich
• Lorenzo Cain
• Charlie Blackmon
• Max Scherzer
• Jacob deGrom
• Jon Lester
• Aaron Nola
• Mike Foltynewicz
• Josh Hader
• Brad Hand
• Sean Doolittle

It’s a fine mix of young, electric players and reliable veterans. Without scrambling to their FanGraphs pages, this is a list that makes sense to me. If presented with this list before the start of the season, I would have nodded and said, “Yes, okay. Baseball is normal this year, apparently.” This is a list of players that I might write a career retrospective for when they retire. This is a list of players who could win the MVP or Cy Young next year, give or take.

If I have a complaint, it’s that the players are still using pen and paper to vote, which means they’re voting long before the teams are announced. Except, that might be saving them from themselves. They’re erring on the side of proven talent instead of hot first halves, and I’ve been proselytizing on behalf of this cause for years.

Sometimes you have to crack a few Blake Snells to make an All-Star omelette.

Or something.

Worst: Blake Snell not making the team

But, okay, sometimes you have to vote for the lightning in a bottle and figure that a national audience wants to watch the lightning. Chris Archer basically did my job for me when it comes to looking up the stats, and Snell is pitching so well that he’s crossed into “Okay, lemme see if this guy is legit” territory when it comes to fans who are baseball-soaked enough to watch the All-Star Game.

This is the balancing act every year. You want the legacy talents, the Vottos and the Poseys, the players who might be in Cooperstown one day, but you also want the players streaking across the quad of baseball right now.

This won’t be an egregious oversight for long, though, because it’s a given that at least one pitcher will drop out because of injury (or because they start the Sunday before the All-Star Game), and Snell will be the first pitcher chosen. He might be on the team by the time you’re reading this.

Still, do a better job separating the players having a good first half and the players having a holy-crap first half. Snell is the latter.

Best: Matt Kemp getting voted in

The fans ... they’re paying attention.

I have fond memories of punching out All-Star ballots until my sneakers were covered in chads. I also have fond memories of my brother building a board with nails that perfectly aligned with Al Oliver, Manny Trillo, and Johnnie LeMaster’s boxes, which allowed us to punch 100 ballots at a time. Those are good, tactile memories.

It’s probably better for fans to have stats in front of them on a computer while they vote.

Holy ... Matt Kemp is doing what now?

It wouldn’t have happened 10 years ago. It’s pretty cool that it’s happing now.

Worst: The Yankees and Dodgers are teaming up for the final vote, and so are the Red Sox and Cardinals, and it’s gross

These four teams are the pushing-a-full-sized-grocery-cart-around-Whole-Foods-and-just-tossing-stuff-in-ass teams of baseball. They didn’t want to team up with the Brewers or Rays. They made a cynical, smart play.

And it’s gross. The Yankees and Dodgers are sittin’ in a tree, and it’s gross. The Red Sox and Cardinals are pretending to be nice, even though they’re a couple months away from facing each other in the World Series, which will also be gross.

I’d argue that you should vote for Jesus Aguilar and Andrelton Simmons just to spite these jerks, except, wow, look at that, I sure have been caring about the All-Star Game for way too long.

Just know that in a few weeks, you’ll have forgotten all about whatever it is that you’re mad at. For now, though, always remember to err on the side of the legacy players, and you’ll have an All-Star roster that won’t embarrass you.

Although if you’re getting embarrassed by All-Star rosters, buddy, I don’t know what to tell you. This stuff will rot your brain. Maybe sit this next one out.

It was a good week for baseball, unless you happen to be on the Orioles or a fan of the Orioles.

We’ve passed the mathematical halfway point of the 2018 MLB season. We’re approaching the figurative halfway point of the 2018 MLB season. And I’m not sure if any of us really know what’s going on.

[production assistant hands me an index card with nothing but MAX MUNCY in 30-point font]

Look, I don’t have time for this, please send your note through the appropriate channels. It’s hard enough to check the standings every day, much less all of the individual performances.

Watching videos until my eyes bleed? Oh, sure, I can do that. And it’s this sort of curation that keeps us coming back every week to review the previous seven days and 100 games of baseball. Because if we don’t do that, we’ll never get the chance to remember that ...

Baseball is good, actually

Click here for the video if you’ve discovered this on Google AMP or Apple News or Lycos Lynx. It’s worth it.

For on the first pitch of a game between the Orioles and Twins, Jake Cave made a stellar catch.

It is our solemn right to pretend that the first pitch of a ballgame is more important than it actually is. Listen to the crowd cheer extra loud for that first called strike, as if to say, “Yes, good, everything seems to be in order.” And when that first pitch is hit over the fence, the pitcher on the mound has to hear the sound of tens of thousands of people rolling their eyes at the same time. We paid $150 for this.

Don’t forget to appreciate the actual catch, though. If you grew up playing baseball or softball, I’m sure at one point, you positioned yourself under a short fence and had a friend throw a ball just over it. Usually your idiot friend would throw it too high or low or off to the side, and you could never get it just right. Then after several unremarkable failures, you would have to go over the fence and retrieve all the baseballs, feeling stupid the whole time. I never did make one of those catches, even when I was trying to.

I think I might go to a park and have my daughter throw some balls just over the fence. I need closure.

Cave was ready on the first pitch to live our dreams for us. He was ready. He was capable. And the ball just happened to be in the perfect spot

Baseball is a hideous gully monster, actually

The decision to watch an Orioles game on purpose right now has to come with a long, extended sigh that resonates from deep within your toes. Within five seconds, you’re reminded that the taste of ash and feathers in your mouth is coming from the ash and feathers in your mouth. The Orioles shoveled it in there when you were sleeping.

The Orioles are in the middle of a six-game losing streak. It’s their fifth-longest losing streak of the season.

The Red Sox haven’t had a losing streak of six games or longer since 2015.

The Orioles are on pace to lose 11 more games than the 1988 team that lost 21 straight games to open the season. If they have to lose an obscene number of games, fine, pluck their nose hairs out on live TV. But don’t rob them of a homer on the first pitch.

That’s just being a jerk, baseball.

Let us study this baseball thing

Jeff Mathis pitched for the Diamondbacks on Sunday and got the loss.

On its own, this probably isn’t worthy of study. Position players pitch a lot more now, which suggests they’re likelier to come into close games. What we need to figure out is how hosed a team has to be in order to rely on a position player in extra innings.

Pretty hosed.

Stop that. All I’m saying is that we need to know what inning managers usually give up. We’ll look at the last 10 occurrences because it’s the golden era of mid-inning pitching changes, which increases the chances of a manager running out of pitchers. We’ll also limit our search to that many because I’m lazy.

Jeff Mathis
Inning: 16th
Score: 3-3
Result: Loss (1 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 9
Did a starter enter in relief? Yes

Of note is that Wil Myers described Mathis as having the best stuff of any position player he’s ever faced.

Also of note: He’s only faced one other position player in the majors, which means his quote was basically a honking, rude subtweet of Dean Anna.

Ryan Goins
Inning: 18th
Score: 1-1
Result: No decision (0 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 8
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Darwin Barney
Inning: 19th
Score: 1-1
Result: Loss (1 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 9, if you count Ryan Goins
Did a starter enter in relief? No

John Baker
Inning: 16th
Score: 3-3
Result: Win (0 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 8
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Also of note: Baker scored the winning run because he’s a proper legend.

Leury Garcia
Inning: 14th
Score: 4-4
Result: Loss (2 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 8
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Casper Wells
Inning: 18th
Score: 7-7
Result: Loss (5 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 9
Did a starter enter in relief? Yes

Also of note: He was relieved by utility infielder John McDonald, who allowed one of the inherited runners to score.

Darnell McDonald
Inning: 17th
Score: 6-6
Result: Loss (3 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 8
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Also of note: McDonald was facing off against Chris Davis, also a position player. Wouldn’t you love to read more about this game? Well, lucky you.

Chris Davis
Inning: 16th
Score: 6-6
Result: Win (2 IP, 0 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 8
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Also of note: Davis’ changeup was so good, it made this dude squeeze his own armpit:

Felipe Lopez
Inning: 18th
Score: 0-0
Result: No decision (0 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 8
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Also of note: Skipper should have let him pitch another inning.

Joe Mather
Inning: 19th
Score: 0-0
Result: Loss (2 IP, 2 ER)
Pitchers used prior to entrance: 9, including Felipe Lopez
Did a starter enter in relief? No

Also of note: I can’t think of his name without thinking about this post.

“In life, you have to make your own trails!” he shouted as he bounded off into the clearing, the thirsty joemather crunching under his bare feet.

No, it’s not funny. I literally think of “the thirsty joemather crunching under his bare feet” whenever I stumble across Joe Mather’s name.

If one day I stop writing about baseball, don’t wonder why. Just know that I was someone who would accidentally stumble across Joe Mather’s name.

Anyway, what did we learn? That I wanted to link to a bunch of box scores of these extremely cool games. But also that Mathis came in slightly before the typical position player in a close game, but not egregiously so. That most managers will use a position player before they use a starting pitcher on an off day. And that most of these guys didn’t do well, probably because they aren’t pitchers.

I would suggest that the trick is to have one reliever who can pitch five innings in any given game, except the Diamondbacks had that with Jorge De La Rosa, and they used him for seven pitchers. The real trick is to see through time, and if that doesn’t work, sigh a lot and hope for a better fate than poor Jeff Mathis, who was one strike away from an amazing outing.

This week in appreciating the efforts of a husky fellow who tried really, really hard

Jesús Aguilar is a husky fellow having a breakout season, and he can do a lot of things for a winning team. He can hit dingers, hit homers, hit baseballs over the fence, and also hit baseballs super far. Yes, he can also hit for average, apparently, and he can play both first and a corner outfield spot, but for the most part, he’s not in there for his hit-and-run skills. He’s there to hit baseballs a long way.

He’s not there to run from first to home on a wacky play.

What I appreciate the most on this play:

1. Eddie Rosario’s throw
2. Bobby Wilson’s there-there pat
3. Aguilar turning his head and lying down to take a literal dirt nap as the catcher pats his hand in sympathy
4. That Aguilar peeks over his shoulder as he rounds third and realizes he’s going to hear it from everyone in the dugout
5. The tag
6. That Bobby Wilson is still in the majors and making tags and there-there pats.

This all leads to a new segment that I wasn’t even planning on.

Baseball, but a painting

I call this one “The Death of Jesús of Maracay.”

The catcher reaches out in vain to save his friend, but alas, it is too late. The human-sized streak through the batter’s box represents our mortality. The weird mud bog above home plate that you can see in the video represents a kind of weird mud bog. The guy on the right is the president, watching over us all.

I’m still working on this interpretation, leave me alone.

Bartolo Colon threw a complete game

He lost, but that’s not the point. The 45-year-old is the oldest player to throw a complete game since Jamie Moyer in 2010, and he’s pitching like someone who wants to keep pitching next year. If he does that, he’ll have milestones to chase:

46-year-olds who have thrown a complete game
Satchel Paige
Phil Niekro
Charlie Hough
Bobo Newsom
Jack Quinn

47-year-olds who have thrown a complete game
Phil Niekro
Jamie Moyer

48-year-olds who have thrown a complete game
Phil Niekro

Of course, Niekro was a knuckleballer, as was Hough. Moyer was a changeup specialist, and Paige was a master of illusion in his old age. When it comes to quadragenarians who rely mostly on differently gripped fastballs, Colon is definitely something of a freak.

I don’t know if he’ll make it to 48 without a knuckleball. But a showing like this at least gives me a teensy sliver of hope that he’ll have a chance. He’s not exactly the perfect baseball hero — let he who is without a PED suspension and a second family throw the first stone — but he’s a pretty danged fun baseball story. And with each complete game, I start hoping just a little bit more.

Baseball picture of the week

The best picture of the week? That was probably taken by Rockies team photographer Matt Dirksen:

I can appreciate the majesty of Charlie Blackmon leaving the cornfield to not invite Ty Cobb to the next game. There are a lot of entrants in the “badass ballpark scenery” genre, which is why baseball is truly for the aesthetically minded, but the sky in this one gives it an extra boost.

Can you get the same kind of majesty from a football game? Yeah. Kinda.

Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images

For my money, the difference is in the stadium or ballpark lurking in the background. If a football goes there, it probably means someone screwed up. But the stands of a baseball game are inactive participants stored with charged energy. If the baseball goes there — and it often does — it makes the entire section buzz. If it’s hit in the right section, it makes the entire ballpark buzz.

Maybe I’m overthinking it? I’m probably overthinking it.

Well, in that case, here are my runners up, in which Billy Hamilton loses six months off his life in the same week:

Photo by David Banks/Getty Images

Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images

I don’t know the context of these pictures, and I don’t care to. All I know is that they make baseball seem like some sort of post-apocalyptic sport from a 1974 Roger Corman film called Smash, Smash, Smash, and I’m very interested in this new iteration.

Maybe you should just watch football.

Stop that.

what the shit

https://www.mlb.com/news/twins-record-no-putouts-at-first-base-in-game/c-284106326

When Blanka tries to hit you with a rolling attack, so you slide under him and counter with a hadouken

Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images

What Shohei Did

Rose from the disabled and renewed the hope of his wavering team. That’s all. Or, if you want to be technical, he went 3-for-17, with eight strikeouts and a 634 OPS. Which isn’t great.

He still snuck in a game-winning homer, though:

He took a tie game from zero-to-Vasgersian in just over a second, and he’s now 3-for-6 in his pinch-hitting appearances. The biggest surprise this season isn’t that Ohtani has been pitching or hitting as well as he has, but that he’s been used as a pinch-hitter just six times. Just like when it comes to rising gas prices and climate change, I blame the designated hitter. In the National League, he’d get four pinch-hit appearances per week.

But we’re not here to get picky. We’re here to celebrate that Ohtani is playing at all. In the Angels’ walk-off win against the Dodgers, he went from an 0-2 count to a walk, then stole second before scoring on a two-out single. It would be much, much better if he were still Max Scherzer stapled to Cody Bellinger, because that sure was a delight to follow.

Given the choice of watching him only hit or not watching him at all, we’re in the better of the two timelines. I’m not sure if I’ve rooted for anything this season more than the platelet-rich plasma that’s sloshing around his elbow, but even if he’s done pitching for a year, he’ll still be around, reminding us that he’s one of baseball’s rarest talents.

This week in McGwire/Sosa

McGwire
13 AB this week
281 AB for the season

3 HR this week
40 HR for the season

.308/.471/.533 this week
.310/.483/.779 for the season

Sosa
16 AB this week
349 AB for the season

2 HR this week
35 HR for the season

.250/.333/.625 this week
.321/.382/.665 for the season

All-Star break! Time to rest a bit and JUST KIDDING, IT WAS AT COORS FIELD, AND WE WERE ALL HIGH OFF DINGERS.

Note that there is no apostrophe in that last word, which would have left you in suspense.

If you don’t think baseball was excited to showcase dingers at Coors, you are being a silly contrarian:

And, of course, Sosa didn’t participate and McGwire didn’t make it out of the first round because that’s what happens when you even pretend to care about the Home Run Derby. It will break your heart.

Spoonerism of the week

Okay, so Wookie Milson is maybe — maybe— a 45-grade spoonerism. Yes, it makes you think about Chewbacca, but it’s not really spelled the same way (Wookiee), and “Milson” isn’t inherently funny.

What puts it over the top for me is that you have to pronounce Wookie to rhyme with “Mookie,” which means you have to pronounce it like George Plimpton. And now I’m picturing a movie in which George Plimpton has to take care of an irascible eight-year-old because of circumstances beyond his control, and there’s a scene where he says something like ...

Charles! I command you to pick up your Wookiee.

Except he rhymes it with “Mookie” and I can’t stop laughing at this thought, and the movie also stars Shelley Long as the neighbor and love interest for Plimpton’s adult son and, look, it’s been a long column, and we should probably end it here.

Until next week!

The universe owed the Astros an incredibly dumb win, and the A’s happened to be collateral damage.

A million internet years ago, I listed the five best things about the worst play you will ever watch. It was a play that involved the Astros, and I still think about it often. The play was so, so bad. The 2012 Astros were so, so bad. That play was an aerosol metaphor being sprayed around the room, and there was absolutely no escaping it.

Six years later, we have a contender to the throne. The only thing keeping it away from the top slot is that the A’s aren’t bad. They’re on a roll. That is, they were on a roll.

So what, they lost a game on a silly error, leave them alone. It can’t be that bad, right?

Oh. Oh, my.

In a way, this is something of a bookend to that other play involving the Astros. The universe owed them something to make up for the abject humiliation of the last time, and we’re required to study it in the same way.

Here, then, are the five best things about the worst play you’ll see this season. If you’re an A’s fan, they’ll be the five worst things.

But in 20 years, you’ll laugh about this. Promise.

1. The odds

Holy crap, the odds.

Start with the odds of a ball rolling back into play seven feet from home plate. It’s something you’ll see about two or three times a year, unless you don’t see it at all. It’s rare to hit a ball so poorly that the English takes it back into the field of play, while the batter watches, dumbfounded. Let’s be incredibly generous and guess that the average batter has this happen once every four seasons, or 2,000 at-bats.

1/2000 = .0005 = .05 percent

Now move to the part where Jonathan Lucroy threw a ball off Alex Bregman’s head. You’ve watched a lot of dropped third strikes, right? How often does the catcher hit the runner when he’s making a calm, collected throw to first? Almost never. There have been over 24,000 strikeouts this year. Of those, 61 reached first base after a dropped third strike.

None of the batters who reached first safely after a dropped third strike did so because of a catcher’s error.

So pretend this was a dropped third strike. It’s hard for baseball players to screw up a calm, collected throw of 60 feet. I’ve been on the field before games, with dozens of reporters and other players milling about, and there are always a couple of players who are parallel to the first-base line and just in foul territory that absolutely firing warmup throws back and forth to each other. As if it’s not big deal. As if they couldn’t kill someone with just one bad throw.

But they don’t make a bad throw. They throw baseballs for a living.

I’d guess that a catcher hits a runner going down the line maybe once in his career. Johnny Bench had 850 assists in his career, so let’s just use that as a benchmark.

1/850 = .00117 = .1 percent

Now consider how hard it is for a professional baseball player to grab a ball with his bare hand and tag the runner. It’s not hard. Tell ‘im, Wash.

It’s really not that hard. Come on.

The act of picking a ball up and tagging a runner without it squirting out of your bare hand is a hard one to even quantify. One in 10,000? One in 100,000?

I will err on the side of caution and suggest that a botched bare-handed tag happens every 1,000 tag attempts.

1/1000 = .001 = .1 percent

That is an EXTREMELY conservative estimate, in my estimation. But now we get to add the three together, and this should be fun.

.0005 * .00117 * .001 = .000000000585

That is, roughly, once in every 500 million baseball plays. It’s possible that baseball could exist well past 17776 and we would still never see a play like this again.

The odds, man. The odds.

(Note: A similar play will probably happen tomorrow, just because baseball wants to prove a point.)

2. That Bregman was involved in the other dumbest walkoff of the year

I’ll bet Pete Rose didn’t have a walk-off win that was half as dumb as this one, and Bregman had one even dumber just a couple months later. What sorcery is this?

Really, I always thought the Astros needed this kind of help.

3. That you can make an argument that it wasn’t even the dumbest way that a team lost that night

The Indians might have lost a game because one of their relievers is nicknamed “OP” and one is nicknamed “OT.”

Danny

Dan

Otero

Ottie

Oatie

Danot

Tero

OT-OT

Otsel

Ero

There are a lot of lazy nicknames if you desire.

Danny Danny Bo Banny

Myxlplyx but Dan

Literally so many nicknames, and you thought the manager chose “OT”?

That’s dumber than a ball rolling into play before a catcher grabs it, drops it while making the tag, and then hits the runner in the head going to first.

ahahahahaha no it isn’t, sorry.

4. There are already YouTube truthers fired up about this

This is the wrong call. Bregman should have been called out of the baseline. While avoiding the tag he travels “Behind” home plate toward 3rd base, and is no longer in the baseline.

Bless you, internet. You will murder us all.

Also, if I remember correctly, while advancing toward first base from home plate you are not allowed to move backwards to avoid a tag. It is the only base you are compelled to advance forward no matter what. You can stop, or run forward, but you cannot run backward to avoid a tag.

The word “behind” appears 10 times in the official MLB rulebook. The mentions come in the following context:

1. To forbid a runner setting up behind the base to get a head start on a sacrifice fly
2. Placement of the rosin bag
3. A weird scenario to explain how umpires can’t award two bases in an unlikely and specific circumstance
4. An explanation of dead balls
5. The description of a windup
6. Where an umpire can set up before the pitch
7. An explanation of forfeited games

This was not one of those situations.

5. That there were a couple of fans who had hope as soon as Lucroy dropped the ball

Why is the dude in the blue buttoned shirt raising his arms to the heavens? It’s not a big deal. The catcher just needs to step to the side and fire the ball to first.

The dude in the blue buttoned shirt was raising his arms to the heavens because there was a chance. I wouldn’t have given him that chance, but he didn’t care. He believed. He was rewarded.

Fair enough. Baseball is a bitey goblin, and sometimes it bites you, and sometimes it bites the other team. The Astros have been on both sides, and it sure has been a spectrum of emotions.

This play, however, was dumber than most. And if it isn’t the worst play of the 2018 MLB season, I don’t want to see the winner.

Kyle Walker of England deflected a shot the hard way, and this sport is awesome.

In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to point out that I am not a well-versed soccer (or “football”) fan, so it’s possible that I will mess up some of the terminology in this post. However, I was watching the World Cup match, and English soccer man Kyle Walker blocked a shot with his bollocks. It was both successful and painful.

As you can see, No. 4 on the Croatian side kicks the soccer ball, and rather than use his hands to deflect the ball — expressly against the tournament rules — Walker is forced to use nothing but his jumblies to parry that proper missile. His next few seconds were spent writhing on the ground with a bit of a dicky tum, as one would expect.

What happened next was inspiring: As play continued, Croatia got the ball back in the danger zone, and Walker rose from the dead to clear the ball. What a danged hero.

When it comes to the BEANS™ rating we’ve developed at SB Nation, we’ll give this one a right 6. It took Walker down, but he made a corking play shortly after, so it was right in the sweet spot between glancing and devastating, which means we can enjoy it without guilt.

Someone should have told me sooner how awesome this sport is.

So what if it cost a future Hall of Famer a couple months?

Barry Larkin ruined everything.

Fans of the 1990 A’s have been able to say this for years. Now it’s our turn. Back in 1989, Major League Baseball held a skills competition that went beyond the Home Run Derby. There were catchers. There were relay throws. There were, of course, dingers. There’s no video — it’s possible that it wasn’t even televised — but we do have archeological evidence that it existed.

Pena scored 21 points by throwing three balls through a target and hitting the target six times. Santiago tossed four through the hole and hit the target six other times. Steinbach and Tettleton were able to throw the ball through the target only once between them.

If we’re being completely honest, this version of the skills competition seems like a little bit of a snooze. I’m all for catchers winging baseballs through a tiny hole at second base, but the rest of the competition featured a relay-throw event and a home run derby that was suspiciously bereft of home runs. Eric Davis hit three home runs and led the derby. Bo Jackson hit one. And never in my life have I wanted baseball’s best relay-throwers to have a relay-throw match in relay-throw thunderdome.

But it existed. And Barry Larkin ruined it.

Baseball did have a skills competition. Larkin was participating in it at the 1989 All-Star Game in Anaheim. He made a throw and his elbow went.

”I heard a pop off in the distance like a gun shot had gone off,” Larkin said. “I was like something is going on here. Then I realized it was my elbow. That wasn’t good.”

Larkin was making a relay throw. The correlation is obvious. Player makes relay throw in relay-throw thunderdome; player gets hurt; relay-throw thunderdome is responsible for the injury. Skills competition is cancelled. Intern responsible for it is let go.

Except, that’s not how elbow injuries work. It’s not ONE BIG THROW that does elbows in. It’s a cumulative injury that builds up with throw after throw after throw. Remember how Jose Canseco’s pitching outing was blamed for his Tommy John surgery? Wasn’t true.

The report from Dr. Jobe took some of the heat off.

He explained that this was a progressive injury, a tear that was becoming greater over time and probably had begun the year before. Jose’s full-fan performance in the bullpen might have enhanced it, and then the throw from the outfield finally blew out the elbow.

The skills competition didn’t help Larkin’s elbow. It was the proverbial straw. But it didn’t cause the injury. If you take the healthiest person in baseball right now, someone with a ligament of steel, they aren’t going to blow up their elbow with one fluky throw. If it wasn’t that hot July evening, it might have been an infield practice that following month. Or maybe in September.

Maybe the week before the 1990 World Series.

Cancelling the skills competition was an overreaction, in other words, and baseball should bring it back.

So what would an improved skills competition look like? Truly, this is the most important question of our modern age. It would definitely include that catcher-accuracy competition, set up like something from FIFA ‘18, with targets set up all around. Behind-the-back pickoff attempts to first, regular throws to second, from-the-knees throws to second, and throws to third, all with tin targets that went CLOOORNG after being hit.

There would also be a bunting competition, just like they’ve had in Korea for years:

And I’m not sure if MLB would need to change a thing. Targets. Bullseyes that are worth more. Pitchers are welcome, as are bat-control specialists. I’m not saying it would be as exciting as the Home Run Derby, but it would be incredibly delightful. At the very least, it would be a nice change of pace.

I would very, very much like to see a Pitchers’ Home Run Derby, even if it took the place of the beefy big boy competition. A control competition, where pitchers are asked to hit bullseye after bullseye with different pitches.

Races. Straight up foot races. One hundred meters, Billy Hamilton vs. Dee Gordon. These players have them in training camp just for gits and shiggles, so don’t pretend like they’re trap doors just waiting to suck healthy players in.

A machine that fires groundballs at 110 mph, deep in the hole, unless it’s up the middle. Two of them set up and pointing in different directions, so the participating infielder doesn’t know which way to lean.

Let’s not forget my very important ideas about the inside-the-park home run derby.

All of it. I want to watch all of it. I want this to be an eight-hour event on a Sunday that Vegas gets with and turns into a delirious day of drinking, gambling, and baseball-related skills. A day of skills that ends with the Home Run Derby, please. Tally up the winners and use that to decide home-field advantage in the All-Star Game, please.

Ahhhh. It’s a beautiful dream. And I’d love to keep blaming poor Barry Larkin for ruining it.

Except it really isn’t his fault. Maybe it was in the early ‘90s, but here’s the real reason why players won’t agree to a skills competition: They enjoy their days off. I’m but a lowly writer, and you can pry the All-Star Break away from my cold, dead hands. I can’t imagine the mental fatigue that comes with the time-to-make-the-donuts grind of baseball, especially when it’s combined with the physical fatigue that comes with competing athletically week after week after week. Dee Gordon doesn’t want to be in Washington D.C. laying down bunts. He wants to be at home, reading a damned book and seeing his family. That goes with just about everyone, including the players who are participating in the Home Run Derby but are not on an All-Star roster.

It’s possible that baseball could cobble together a list of players who are young and/or eager enough to fill out a multi-faceted skill competition experience, but we probably wouldn’t be getting the best players in each genre. It would be an enjoyable time at the ol’ yard, but it wouldn’t necessarily answer the question of “Who is the best at [very specific baseball thing]?”

The real solution is to move the season back to 154 games, make the All-Star Break longer, and pay these players money. Possibly from a GoFundMe that we set up. But until then, the skills competition will remain a beautiful, unattainable dream. And while Barry Larkin didn’t really ruin it, it would have been a lot cooler if his elbow could have held out for another week, just so that we could see the progression of the skills competition.

Dunk tanks. It could have had dunk tanks. I’m not sure how or why, but there could have been something with dunk tanks.

Perhaps, one day, our vision can be realized.

Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, and Mookie Betts are baseball freaks, and they’re all starting in the American League outfield at the same time

In 1957, the National League All Stars started an outfield of Frank Robinson in left, Willie Mays in center, and Hank Aaron in right. Those three players would combine for 2,001 home runs, 6,012 runs batted in, and 407 wins above replacement over their careers. It would be hard to build a better outfield if you could pick from a list of every player in baseball history, much less a group of players active in the same year in the same league.

That will be the best All-Star outfield in baseball history for the next hundred years, I’m guessing. It might always the best outfield in history if the machines take over and stuff us all in their lanthanum mines, effectively ending baseball forever. Either way, it’s the greatest outfield in history as of right now, even if they started just one game together.

The 2018 American League All-Star outfield of Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, and Mookie Betts probably won’t combine for 407 wins above replacement in their respective careers*. It’s too early to compare them to Robinson, Mays, and Hank freaking Aaron. It’s too early to compare them to the Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, and Brady Anderson outfield from the 1996 All-Star Game. There are a lot of winding paths that these careers can still take.

But there’s a reason why I chose that Robinson-Mays-Aaron outfield for that intro, other than the obvious allure of three inner-inner-circle Hall of Famers. In ‘57, all three of them were 26 or younger. Robinson and Aaron were both 22, and Mays was 26. Not only was it the best outfield ever assembled; it was also the beginning of their brilliant careers.

Judge and Trout are 26, and Betts is 25.

While it’s far too early to compare this trio to all-time greats, it’s not too early to wonder just how rare it is for a starting All-Star outfield to be this young and this excellent.

Spoiler: It’s pretty rare.

I looked at all of the starting outfields in All-Star Game history, in both the National and American League, for a trio of players under 26. There are two reasons why I settled on this arbitrary age as the cutoff:

1. It allowed me to write an entire article about these three players, which is incredibly convenient.
2. It’s right before the age of 27, which is the classic baseball peak, according to Bill James. Which suggests that Judge, Trout, and Betts might even get better.

They don’t have to, of course. This is just the fifth time that an outfield in either league has been comprised entirely of players 26 or younger, but we don’t have to go back very far to find the last one. That was in 2016, when Trout and Betts were both in the outfield ... along with Jackie Bradley, Jr. While Bradley could/should break out of his funk, he’s currently a cautionary tale to remind us that players aren’t guaranteed to be as valuable when they’re 28 as they are at 26.

Another all-26-or-younger All-Star outfield was Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, and Jeff Heath in 1941. If you’re wondering who Heath was, it turns out that he was a really good freaking hitter. He might have been closer to the Hall of Fame if not for a gruesome ankle injury, but he’s another reminder that not every All-Star in his early 20s turns out to be Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio.

The first all-26-or-younger All-Star outfield in history was Williams, DiMaggio, and Charlie Keller, which proves my point just as well, even if Keller was a tremendous hitter in his own right.

The fifth all-26-or-younger All-Star outfield was Robinson, Mays, and Aaron, which, holy crap, seriously, just type those three names out together and think about how good they were for decades.

This is all arbitrary, which means we’re leaving off some pretty important young outfields. When Tim Raines, Andre Dawson, and Dale Murphy started both the 1982 and 1983 All-Star Games, it didn’t matter that Dawson was 27 and 28 in those seasons. What mattered is that it was a historically significant and young outfield of brilliance that featured two future Hall of Famers and one could-be-maybe-should-be-ask-me-again-on-the-right-day Hall of Famer in Dale Murphy. The same goes for Tony Gwynn, Darryl Strawberry, and Murphy, except that time Murphy was the old timer.

Al Kaline and Mickey Mantle started three straight All-Star Games when they were younger than 27, but they didn’t make this list because there was some crusty ol’ dude named Ted Williams starting next to them each time. The inclusion of Williams didn’t mean that Kaline and Mantle weren’t the heralds of a new, thrilling era of super outfielders. It just meant that Williams was extremely good at baseball deep into his third decade. He was better than some 26-or-younger rando who wasn’t Ted Williams, because, really, who was?

In other words, there is nothing inherently special about the young, ludicrously outfield of Aaron Judge, Mike Trout, and Mookie Betts just because they all happened to be young at the same time. There were young, brilliant outfielders before them, and there will be young, brilliant outfielders after them. Sometimes, those young, brilliant outfielders will bookend old farts who are still brilliant. Getting three in a row isn’t a scratch-off lottery ticket that allows us to enjoy baseball more.

But this could be something. This could be something that makes your grandchildren jealous. We have Aaron Judge, who used to be only a myth told by feral woodlanders. We have Mookie Betts, the fast-twitch hero we need in this fast-twitch era. And we have Mike Trout, who might be the closest thing to Willie Mays we’ll ever see.

It’s rare to have a young outfield starting the All-Star Game like this. You’re not seeing things. That doesn’t mean this will be the next Robinson-Mays-Aaron or anything close to it. It just means that, goodness, three of the top five players in baseball right now happen to be outfielders in the same league, all under the age of 27.

Appreciate this danged outfield. And appreciate it next year, and the year after that if we’re so lucky. Judge-Trout-Betts isn’t just a normal starting outfield. It’s kind of freaky. The best thing we can do is whistle and say something cute. In 50 years, maybe they’ll be looking back at this outfield with a measure of awe and wonder that only seems reasonable in retrospect.

We’ve seen this before.

Once before.

I’m not saying. I’m just saying.

* There is always the chance that Trout gets there by himself, though

It’s 2018. Of course there are Home Run Derby truthers.

No.

But I suppose that I should, with the deepest of sighs, explain why I thought this post was necessary. In the final round of the 2018 Home Run Derby, Bryce Harper made a furious charge to catch Kyle Schwarber with 18 home runs in regulation time. With 22 seconds left in bonus time, Harper drilled a home run to take the competition.

It’s 2018, though, which means there’s probably some sort of dumb conspiracy afoot. And, friends, I urge you not to search for “Harper cheated” on Twitter. Please, it will damage your brain and your spirits, so you absolutely should not do this, and I’m just kidding, here’s a sampling because I don’t like you:

It goes on and on and on. The truther movement is even harassing poor Jay Jaffe over it. The evidence is this:

Hmm, let me see if I can spice this up a little:

Oh, yeah, baby. That’s ready for your uncle to share on Facebook. Now, as far as I can tell, the official rules of the Home Run Derby aren’t posted online — probably because it’s a silly exhibition — but the argument contends that the pitcher has to wait for the baseball to drop before a new pitch can be thrown. If that’s the case, then, yes, the elder Harper did throw a couple pitches too soon.

Every hitter had a few of these.

STILL IN THE AIR, KYLE. MARK IT ZERO, DUDE. Still, to be fair, Harper’s example — specifically one with fewer than 10 seconds left — was one of the more egregious. So was this a case of Harper and his dad trying to game the system?

No. If you’ll notice in the video, that Harper’s dad does not move his head back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left to follow the flight of the ball. He’s waiting for a cue from an umpire. You can see the umpire telling Schwarber’s pitcher to hold up here:

The pace is dictated by the umpire.

Is it possible that the umpire was an MLB plant whose job it was to give Bryce Harper an extra advantage in his home park? I mean, you get to believe what you want. What’s more likely is that he gave the “go” sign a little too soon on a pitch or two, and Harper’s dad was more than eager to get those pitches up there quickly, considering he had the most errant pitches of any of the pitchers and time was a-wastin’.

I don’t know if the umpire was getting caught up in the moment, or if he had been setting a similar pace for the entire Derby, with it becoming more noticeable as time was expiring.

What I do know is this: Harper won the competition with 22 seconds to spare. He did not get 22 seconds of advantage from these early pitches. And even if he did, the seconds were not stolen by Harper’s dad, who was focused on throwing strikes. While he’s no stranger to pressure — he’s brawled with Popeye several times, which means he’s used to adrenaline — this was probably as much pressure as he’s faced in his sporting life. All he wanted to do was get the signal and throw strikes. Get the signal and throw strikes.

I think you’re just going to have to let Nats fans have this one, internet. Harper’s comeback was incredibly thrilling, and we can probably just leave it at that. Not everything needs to be ruined. Just most things.

While I’ve got you, though, let me talk to you about the weather machine that was about to open up the skies in the extra innings of Game 7 of the 2016 and prevent the Cubs from winning. It all starts with the NSA and a Cardinals fan named Devon Tadbury in 1961. You see ...

Welcome to hell, Orioles. We saved your room for you.

It seems important to remember that the Orioles have had Manny Machado all season. They’re currently 28-69. With their superstar infielder having the best offensive season of his career, the Orioles are in the middle of one of the worst seasons in franchise history. One of the worst seasons in any franchise’s history. And now they’ll be replacing the starting shortstop in the All-Star Game with whatever spare parts they have laying around.

These probably won’t be good spare parts. Just a hunch.

There’s no point in evaluating the trade from the Dodgers’ perspective. They lost their slugging shortstop for the year, so they rented a new one. Machado might help them win the division, like Manny Ramirez in 2008, or he might help them come up short, like Hanley Ramirez in 2012. He might help them win the World Series, like John Tudor. He might not help them win the World Series, like every deadline acquisition since John Tudor. I’m writing this before I know who the prospects are, but, whatever, it’s a great freaking deal for the Dodgers. They’re better.

The Orioles are in baseball hell. They were in the ALCS seemingly just a couple of weeks ago, when Machado was young and under team control for years and years and years. I’m not sure where the disconnect happened — if it was ever possible to sign Machado to an Evan Longoria-like deal when he was a teenager, or even if he would have agreed to a lucrative-but-not-debilitating contract two or three years ago. He might have had his eye on this coming winter since his first All-Star Game in 2013, and nothing was going to change his mind.

There’s nothing to be gained by finger pointing. The Orioles had Machado, a generational talent, and now they have magic beans that have a chance to grow into beanstalks. There isn’t a huge database of deals centered around superstars in their early or mid-20s because these are the kinds of players teams like to keep.

There is one recent trade that might work as a possible comparison, and that’s Miguel Cabrera going from the Marlins to the Tigers. A look back at the trade rumors from back then was illuminating and hilarious:

It sounds like the Yankees will trade Melky Cabrera, but are very reluctant to trade Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, or Ian Kennedy.

The Orioles might get the next Joba Chamberlain. Maybe the next Ian Kennedy. If they dream big, they might the next Melky Cabrera.

But according to Ken Rosenthal, the Dodgers now have the lead (for Miguel Cabera). It may require Matt Kemp, Andy LaRoche, and Clayton Kershaw.

Or the Orioles could forget about Machado almost instantly because they’re concussed from all of the awards falling from the sky. It’s possible, after all. Anything is possible with prospects.

From the outside looking in, though, with a brain that tends to think about the fan experience before the GM experience, I know that the Orioles have lost something substantial. What I can’t stop thinking about is this lede from Moss Klein in a Sporting News article from May, 1988:

The Baltimore Orioles may be willing to trade Cal Ripken. As irrational as that might initially sound, it would probably be a wise move.

If you think that’s heresy, you’re underrating Manny Machado. This could all work out for the Orioles, just like it worked out when the Mariners lost Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez, and Randy Johnson within a few years of each other. Klein’s logic wasn’t wrong. He described a possible deal as a “shortcut to respectability,” which is exactly how the current Orioles are looking at this trade.

What the Orioles had before this trade was a wondrous talent, someone who made baseball worth watching even in the very worst years. Even in the years when they had a .289 winning percentage, like they do now. He was a name that looked great on the back of a jersey and someone who made the jobs easier for the marketing and promotions folks. A ballpark giveaway? Uh, yeah, sure, how about a Manny Machado ... golf umbrella? Yes, yes, a golf umbrella in the shape of Machado’s head. That’s 30,000 tickets sold and something that will keep you dry.

What the Orioles have now is a void that they’ll attempt to fill with all sorts of replacement Machados. Maybe it’s one of the guys who came over from the Dodgers, or maybe it’s the draft pick they’ll have earned with their unfathomably miserable play this year. They’ll get these prospects, give them a little sunlight, a little water, and watch them grow.

The odds are overwhelmingly, astronomically against anyone being as good as Machado. That goes for any prospects in the organization now, and it goes for any prospects in the organization in the next five years. Them’s just the odds. That’s how good Machado has been, and that’s how rare for a player to accomplish what he’s accomplished before turning 25.

Machado was an idea once. He was the reward for losing 98 games in 2009, and Orioles fans got to sit and stare at the Baseball America scouting reports and think, “What if?” Then he was a prospect, a top prospect, and the Orioles could think “What if?”, but a little more confidently, with more details filled in. Then he was a teenager outplaying most of the veterans, and then he was an All-Star on a team that was four wins from the World Series. The “What if?” became a cry of jubilation that translated to “We get to watch this guy. We get to watch this guy.”

Now they’re back to prospects and “What if?” They had no choice. Convincing Machado to stick around just in case would have been tough. Losing him for a compensatory draft pick would have been tough. They had to trade him. They probably should have traded him years ago if they couldn’t extend him, with the benefit of hindsight.

But Manny Machado was on the Orioles, and now he’s not. In his place, at the bottom of the hill, is a whole mess of uncertainly and the realistic scenario that they’ll have to wait years for a player who was even close to this valuable or fun. It could happen.

It’s just a damned shame that this couldn’t keep happening, though. Sports are just the worst.

The passage of time is just the worst.

Washington baseball has been through a lot, and will make it if Bryce Harper leaves

You could feel it in Nationals Park this week, this tension surrounding the future of Bryce Harper. The cheers for the 2018 Home Run Derby were a little more urgent, a little more resigned than they might have otherwise have been.

Harper might leave the Nationals forever. He also might not leave, and build a Hall of Fame career with the Nationals over the next decade. Or he might take $400 million of the franchise’s money and give them 10 injury-marred seasons in exchange. Still, there’s a good chance that he goes away and doesn’t come back.

The Nationals won’t fold the entire franchise if Harper leaves. Life would go on, and considering the team is struggling to stay over .500 this season (with Harper hitting .214 and playing rough defense), it’s possible that they might even get better.

There would be symbolic ramifications of a Harper departure, though. The Nationals are currently in the middle or at the tail end of one of the most engaging, electric periods in the history of Washington baseball. Other than the Walter Johnson era, which ended nearly 100 years ago, it might be one of the only engaging and electric periods in the history of Washington baseball. The baseball gods gave the Nationals the gift of an all-time talent, and it’s possible that they’ll have turned him into four NL East titles, four crushing losses in the first round of the postseason, an MVP, one of the most exciting Home Run Derbies in history, and a sack filled with memories.

It’s possible they won’t have used Harper to finish their ultimate project, their most important in the century-plus of Washington baseball. Harper might leave before the Nationals create an identity that’s different from the current one, which is the sneaky-sad team from the crushingly sad baseball town.

Escaping that identity is something that Washington baseball has been trying to do for the last century or so.

If Nationals Park were a person, its name would be John Anderson. Please, if you happen to be a John Anderson, hear me out. Don’t email your angry thoughts just yet. Being named John Anderson didn’t prevent anyone from appearing in Psycho or running for president or selling millions of records. It’s a fine name. A strong name.

But the people in charge of naming a park for Nationals settled on “Nationals Park,” which is the John Anderson of ballpark names. The ballpark happens to be completely unremarkable, entirely pleasant, and wholly functional. It’s more likely to be accidentally left off a “Best Ballparks in MLB” slideshow than occupy the top slot.

Do you like wide concourses and plentiful concessions? How about a batter’s eye and ample but not excessive foul territory? Are you pro-seats and walls? Well, boy howdy, do I have the ballpark for you.

As a place to watch a baseball game comfortably, it’s great. There’s parking, the Metro is close by, and the views are solid from everywhere in the ballpark, even the upper deck. Functional doesn’t have to be an insult. But if the Nationals are going to build an identity, they’ll need to do it without the assist of a 37-foot wall in left field, a body of water behind right field, or a warehouse to pepper with home runs.

It doesn’t help that the surrounding area is also looking for an identity. Washington D.C. is one of the most historically vibrant cities in the country, but the neighborhood surrounding Nationals Park is almost entirely new. There are condos after condos, construction sites next to construction sites, hip restaurants tucked under the high rises, with plans for newer, hipper restaurants coming. Washington is a city where the plaques seemingly have plaques, but the Navy Yard neighborhood is trying to start over. The section for “projects” on its Wikipedia page is substantially longer than the “history” section.

Surrealism does make a cameo at Nationals Park, though. Around the perimeter of the ballpark, there are ... unique ... statues honoring Washington baseball legends.

That’s Walter Johnson, one of the greatest pitchers of all time, apparently frozen in carbonite while fighting Dhalsim.

That’s Frank Howard, Senators slugger and extremely large man. He has four bats in this representation, which is probably against the rules, but that’s okay. He’s a symbol of power, so he gets extra bats.

CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

On the fringes of one of the more nondescript ballparks in baseball, here are oases of surreal eccentricity. The only problem with them is that once you think about them, they don’t make any sense.

Beyond the aesthetics of the statues, it’s the subject matter that’s odd. The first statue is a likeness of the pitcher with the most wins in Minnesota Twins history. The second statue is of the slugger who ranks in the all-time top ten in at-bats, RBI, home runs, and walks for the Texas Rangers. Johnson might have several arms in that statue, but none of them threw a pitch for the Washington Nationals. Howard might have four bats, but none of them drove in a run for the team.

The best players in this franchise’s history, technically, are Gary Carter, Tim Raines, and Andre Dawson, who played for the franchise when it was the Montreal Expos. You will not find statues or merchandise celebrating them around the ballpark.

What these statues are trying to sell is the idea of baseball in Washington. It has a rich history. It also has a history of crushing the spirits of anyone who makes the mistake of caring about baseball there.

In 1904, legendary baseball writer Charles Dryden wrote the famous line “Washington – first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League,” which set the Washington Senators up as a kind of proto-Cubs to act as a placeholder until the real Cubs stopped winning championships. But from 1907 through 1927, the Senators (known colloquially as the “Nationals,” even then) had Walter Johnson, one of the best pitchers to ever live, and in 1924, they won the World Series. The success lingered through 1933, when they won the pennant and finished second in attendance in the American League.

That was the zenith, though, and the decline and fall was a bloody mess. The Nats played 27 more seasons in Washington, and they were in the bottom half of AL attendance in 24 of them. Correlations between losing and underwhelming attendance happen in every city with every sport, but there’s extra punishment for the teams that play in hot and sticky weather. Sitting through bad baseball on a humid 100-degree day might be an okay way to make a little extra money, but it turns out that the teams want you to pay them. Screw that.

There were other reasons for the decline in attendance. The St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, sucking up at least a fraction of the fans who would need to travel from Maryland to see Major League Baseball. Calvin Griffith, who assumed ownership of the Senators when his dad passed away in 1955, blamed the writers for being mean to his perennially last-place teams, and he was also convinced that “baseball in Washington was unable to compete with the heavy horse race mutuel betting in the capital area,” according to a Sporting News article from 1959. Griffith was also unabashedly racist, which put him at odds with a huge swath of his potential audience.

Mostly, though, it was the team sucking.

When Griffith moved the Senators to Minnesota, not all was lost, because the vote allowing them to move came with a rider that required baseball to put an expansion franchise in Washington. There wasn’t even a one-year gap between the old team and the new team. That was the good news.

The bad news was that the old Senators took enough young talent with them to put the Twins into the World Series within five years. Harmon Killebrew played in that final season in Washington, as did Jim Kaat, Bob Allison, Camilo Pascual, and Zoilo Versalles, who all combined to bring 20 All Star appearances, three postseason berths, and two MVPs to Minnesota. The new Senators would be an expansion team.

They, too, sucked.

Those Senators lost 100 games or more in each of their first four seasons, and they finished over .500 just once in their 11 seasons before moving to Texas and becoming the Rangers after the 1971 season.

Combined, these two versions of the “Nationals” played 71 seasons in Washington, and 19 of those teams finished over .500. They finished in last place — in divisions that were usually eight or ten teams deep — about 20 percent of the time.

More importantly, they drew more than a million fans in a single season just once out of those 71 seasons. Washington was always thought of as a logical place for a new team as baseball looked to expand, but it was always going to be a harder sell than it should have been.

Here, I’ll simplify it for you with a one-sentence history of Washington baseball before the current iteration of the Nationals: The teams stunk, and it was impossible for anyone to care.

Intermission: Best names on the 1924 Washington Senators, ranked

1. Firpo Marberry
2. Slim McGrew
3. Chick Gagnon
4. Mule Shirley
5. Showboat Fisher
6. Doc Prothro
7. Nick Altrock
8. Nemo Leibold
9. Goose Goslin
10. Muddy Ruel

This is what the new new Nationals signed themselves up for. They didn’t need to attach themselves to the fatal misery of the Montreal Expos; they had the intermittently fatal misery of the old Washington teams to celebrate.

While the first team in new new Nationals history finished .500, they quickly lost 100 games with two different unwatchable teams. They were a wayward home for former future superstars like Austin Kearns, Nick Johnson, Lastings Milledge, Wily Mo Pena, and Elijah Dukes.

But you can tell the story of the new new Nationals in one statistic: In their first season after moving from Montreal, they drew 2.7 million fans, which is more than any Washington team had drawn in any three consecutive seasons combined. It was more than the combined attendance for the first four seasons of the Senators team that moved to Texas. Even when the team lost 102 games in the 2008, they still drew more than two million.

The new new Nationals came into baseball at a fortuitous time. The dirty secret about the golden era of baseball is that not a lot of people actually came out to watch it.

In the modern era, people will come out, especially when a team has a superstar to offer. For all of the misery the baseball gods had foisted on the Senators, Senators, and Nationals, a cosmic tumbler finally clicked into place. The Nationals were four losses worse than anyone else, and they got to pick first in one of the rare drafts where there is an obvious consensus first-overall talent who was almost guaranteed to change his franchise.

The Nationals got to select Bryce Harper, who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was 16. That feature article came with a lede that detailed a 570-foot homer and a headline that compared him to LeBron James. It was a gift from the heavens, the kind of gift that eventually gave the Cavaliers a championship and changed the vibe of an entire city.

Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images

They made the postseason in Harper’s first season. In his first five seasons, there were as many postseason appearances for the Nationals as there had been in the previous 71 seasons of Washington baseball. If the Nationals were going to stop being a sneaky-sad team from a crushingly sad baseball town, it was going to happen with Harper.

Then the sneaky sadness became more overt. There were more Sports Illustrated covers, mostly to tout the Nationals as the best team in baseball, which they’ve been at various points over the last few years, but there was always a brutal first-round exit waiting for them in the postseason. The Harper window was open, but there was always a trap door underneath the entire team.

• Why was Pete Kozma even playing?
• Why were the Nationals so bad in the first half of 2013?
• Why did Matt Williams pull Jordan Zimmermann?
• Was it really better to rely on Marc Rzepczynski, Blake Treinen 1.0, Sammy Solis, Shawn Kelley, and Oliver Perez rather than a Max Scherzer nearing 100 pitches?

None of that had anything to do with Harper, but it all shoved the window down a little bit further. Now the Nationals are hovering around .500, and their special baseball wunderkind, that gift from the heavens, might leave after the season. They flew too close to the sun on wings made out of wonderful, billowy hair, and now they must return to their destiny as a sad team from a sad baseball city.

Except that explanation is as dumb as shit.

The myth is that DC is entirely a transient city, which will keep Nationals Fever at 98.6 degrees for now and forever. But that’s the silly logic that was also used to explain why the Vegas Golden Knights would flop and flounder in a city that wasn’t built for hockey. What actually happens in these situations is the locals — and there are millions of of them — finally have something to latch onto in a way that separates them from the dorks just passing through. It’s something that roughly translates to: “You can take the freeways and the restaurants and make everything more expensive, but this here sports team? This is mine, dammit.” That feeling can be a powerful, defining force. It can become an identity.

It wasn’t a bunch of wonks losing their minds when Jayson Werth tried to jump through home plate. It was people who were wholly invested in the idea that baseball in Washington was something worth caring about.

Maybe there were a few wonks.

And the demise of Washington baseball is, for once, greatly exaggerated. In right field, there’s a 40-foot-wide picture of Max Scherzer’s eyes to remind you that they employ the best pitcher alive. The crowds are still streaming in, even if they’re just as disappointed about the 2018 season as you would expect.

The most remarkable piece of symmetry might be with Juan Soto, the player Yoda was referring to as he gazed into the stars and made his proclamation. Part of Bryce Harper’s mystique is that he was doing things that teenagers weren’t supposed to do. When he won the NL MVP, it was proof that we weren’t wrong to make a big deal about his precociousness. Teenagers just aren’t supposed to do that.

Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images

Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images

Yet just as the previous phenom is about to leave the nest, here’s another one who is somehow off to an even faster start as a teenager. The possibility that your favorite team will go another 50 years without a Soto is a reminder that not all franchise cornerstones have to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated before they’re anointed. Sometimes they just happen.

Even more relevant is the Nationals have an owner who seems to care very much about the team’s success. While that was surely the case with both of the Griffiths, Ted Lerner has shown a willingness to play by modern baseball’s rules and play the part of a big-market bully at times. No owner has a better relationship with Scott Boras, which is practically a Webster’s-worthy definition of an owner who is willing to spend to win.

It’s possible that whoever succeeds Lerner will stumble, and perhaps there will be an ownership change in the near future, but there’s been something of a proof of concept with the Nationals and Washington baseball. The area will support a winning team. The area has probably always been willing to support a winning team, but they just didn’t get enough opportunities. The fans are willing to come out and cheer the superstars, and they’ll continue to hope those dumb hopes.

If that happens to include Bryce Harper, that’s great. If it doesn’t, not a whole lot will change. The Nationals already have an identity. It isn’t tethered to the past, it isn’t tethered to a unique ballpark, and it isn’t tethered to the whims of a single player, no matter how special he was supposed to be or how special he actually was.

The Nationals are a fully functioning part of baseball’s ecosystem now. Their future will hold some ups and some downs, some brilliant seasons and some disappointing seasons, just like every other team. They might take Soto and rule the baseball world one of these Octobers, or we could be back here in seven years, talking about the Soto window closing.

But this is already the most hopeful baseball team in Washington over the last century, and it will probably stay that way, even through the inevitable down years. They were lucky enough to enjoy Bryce Harper for years, and they might get to enjoy him for years to come, but they’ve already forged a new identity out of the ashes of previous franchises. The ballpark features statues of a Twins pitcher and a Rangers slugger because they want to celebrate the idea of baseball in Washington.

Finally, after 100 years, it finally seems like something worth celebrating, even if there’s still a whole lot of sadness they need to hack through.

The Mets are a mess, but is there really anything they could have done differently?

Noah Syndergaard was put on the 10-day disabled list over the weekend with hand, foot, and mouth disease. Please, hold the wisecracks. I’ve had it before. It’s completely miserable. Blisters, fevers, scars ... it’s a mess. Please, send your thoughts to him.

My working theory is that any disease that requires an Oxford comma is a nasty disease that should be avoided, and I wish Syndergaard the best. It’s strange to see a Norse god felled by a toddler’s malady, but this is another reminder that we’re only here because the germs let us stay.

Still, the wisecracks are natural because you would shout “METS” if I asked, “Which team is likeliest to have a player contract hand, foot, and mouth disease?” It’s not just that, though. It’s that you’d shout “METS” after getting to “Which team is likeliest to have a player contract anything.” Mets players are more likely to contract a staph infection, dropsy, and the grippe. The whole team could contract malaria on a trip to Finland.

Because this is the Mets, there was something even more concerning than the freak illness. Yoenis Cespedes came back this week and mashed a dinger, and the happy vibes from that swing lasted at least several minutes. After the game, Cespedes described surgery to repair his heels as an if-not-when kind of necessity, which was a big surprise to everyone. Maybe it wasn’t a surprise to the Mets, but considering that they have a no-comment policy on the health of individual players, we’ll never know. Assuming the worst is a rational response.

Perhaps the most important news from the last week is that the selling has officially begun, with Jeurys Familia going to Oakland, turning a mostly unwatchable bullpen into a completely unwatchable bullpen. The selling has begun, and it might not stop until the biggest stars are gone.

It’s 2018, which seems like a fine time to remind every one that the Mets were in the 2015 World Series.

I know that three years is an eternity in baseball time — just look at who was in the 2014 ALCS — so this isn’t so surprising. Still, the vibe after they just missed on the championship was more “Their time will come” instead of “that was their one chance, and now they’re screwed,” but it turns out the latter was the more appropriate response.

My question is this: What should the Mets have done differently after the the 2015 World Series?

If you’re going to play this game, note that you can’t fire the owners. The Wilpons are even worse than the typical zillionaires that have a sports team to play with. They’re former zillionaires that have a sports team to play with, which means they’re doubling down on the emotional investment. They really do care about the Mets, possible to an irrational degree. Their passion and base-level knowledge makes them something like WFAN callers with unlimited power, which isn’t something that will help anyone sleep better at night.

If you’re going to play this game, also note that you can’t have the benefit of perfect hindsight. You can’t have the Mets sign Max Muncy or trade for Jesus Aguilar. Maybe — just maybe — you can complain about them not bringing Daniel Murphy back. Except if you look at how his season has gone this year, he would have been another bullet point in the LOL METS collection, and it’s not like he would have sent them to the World Series last year. Can you really fault a team for thinking the player with a sudden surge in his 30s wasn’t going to be a great long-term investment?

If you’re going to play this game, you have to note that any sort of retroactive plea for the Mets to trade prospects for immediate help looks extra silly right now, when they’re desperately trying to acquire prospects and reboot. This game does not allow you to choose Justin Verlander over Yu Darvish; you can’t rewrite history with the same precision that you would like. You just have to choose the option of “trade prospects for immediate help,” and it’s going to be a mixed bag. Brandon Nimmo for Sonny Gray probably wasn’t going to help.

If you’re going to play this game, you can’t suggest that the Mets sign only the free agents who work out. There’s no “get Nelson Cruz” available here, and not only because he would have been eaten by a sewer alligator if he were signed by the Mets. The option to spend more money is valid, but it comes with risks. This year’s team is almost proof that those risks aren’t worth it, as the Mets finally started spending, and almost all of the free agents signed this offseason have been somewhere between disastrous and miserable. You can pick on the Mets for this, but I thought Todd Frazier was a great value and good idea.

There are a lot of seemingly great values and good ideas in the free agent market over the past five years. There weren’t a ton of actual great values and good ideas. If the Mets spent more money on free agents, some of them would have been J.A. Happ and some of them would have been Ian Kennedy. You don’t get to choose. You only get to roll more dice.

If you’re going to play this game, you might get to a point where the Mets win nine more games in 2016 and don’t have to play in the NL Wild Card Game. You might get them to the World Series, and they might even win it. But that will take some Doctor Strange-like ability to sort through all of the different permutations. The real answer was that the Mets were always doomed, and not just because they were the Mets. Entropy will always win.

The Mets were doomed in the same way that other teams were doomed. It’s why the Royals and Orioles probably — probably — won’t meet in this year’s ALCS. It’s why the Giants couldn’t sustain anything after 2014, even with one of the biggest payrolls in baseball. It’s why the Pirates passed the Cardinals in the standings over the weekend, and it’s why the Pirates needed a nine-game winning streak to get over .500 in the first place. It’s why every team except for the Yankees needs to reset and reboot every so often. Even the Yankees thought they were doing that before being pleasantly surprised.

It doesn’t help that the Yankees share the same market, of course. It doesn’t help that the Mets had the illusion of longevity, with a gaggle of young All-Star starters just waiting to get better and better. But the more I look at the Mets, the more I look at a team that proves that baseball is a mean, ornery headmaster and not a team that proves that the Mets will be the LOL METS for the rest of eternity, just because that’s what we’re used to.

It’s strange how Cespedes has been handled. It’s quirky that Syndergaard has an illness that doesn’t usually afflict baseball players. There’s a lot of messiness in the Mets right now, even more than usual.

The more I stare at the chessboard, though, I’m not sure what would have saved them. A front office who could have seen the Muncys and Aguilars before everyone else, perhaps. A progressive front office that was exploring new ways to acquire talent. Which is to say, the Mets really needed to make a wholesale change immediately after winning a pennant. Which would have been the dumbest suggestion possible at the time.

The current Mets just might not be proof of anything, in other words. They don’t even have to be proof of the LOL METS. They just might be a baseball team, and those things are ripe for humiliation. Always have been. Always will.

It’s just a little more noticeable when the star pitcher gets a preschool disease and the star outfielder is playing the same game of telephone as previously injured players, that’s all.

Some of these trades are realistic. Some of them would be a tougher sell. But all of them should happen.

Let’s be clear about what this post is. This is not a selection of specific trade rumors. There is nothing worse than a national writer taking five seconds to look at a Baseball America list, picking a few names out of a hat, and calling it a viable trade. Now, even if I studied a team’s farm system like I was writing a 600-page book on them, and I talked to every person in the organization’s front office for dozens of hours, I will still come up with a fake trade that both sides hate. But, more importantly, I’m not willing to pretend to work that hard.

That’s how fake trades work on the internet. Never fake trade on the internet.

So I’m just listing the return the contending teams will get, and you’ll just have to use your imagination if you’re a fan of the rebuilding teams. The only rule is that I can’t take a team with a bottom-ranked farm system like the Giants and somehow get them Jacob deGrom. For the big whales, there needs to be a lot of prospect plankton.

Let’s dive in, then, and make people mad! Here are some fake trades that should totally happen.

The Nationals should trade with the Marlins and get J.T. Realmuto

The Marlins are on pace to lose only 94 games this year, which means they’re better than expected. Still, getting Realmuto out of there is something of a humanitarian mission at this point, and the good news is that there are all sorts of excellent fits for a sweet-swinging catcher with Gold Glove potential. The four worst teams at catcher according to Wins Above Average are all contending right now: the Nationals, A’s, Rockies, and Red Sox. All of them could make a good case for emptying the arm for a 27-year-old catcher under team control for two more years.

The A’s need pitching more than hitting right now, even if that hitting comes with a bonus skill that magically helps pitching. The Red Sox can go in several directions, and they’ll have too many irons in the fire to put all of their eggs into a Realmuto bidding war, especially if nobody’s really sure if the Marlins are even selling. The Rockies have never been much of a trade-the-farm kind of team, and I’m not sure why they would start now.

The Nationals, then. They’re suffering through the death rattle of the Matt Wieters experiment, and they have no plans to stop contending soon. They have the prospects to dangle, like [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], and it would be perfectly neo-Marlins to trade the last beloved player within the division for maximum pain.

The Red Sox should trade with the Reds and get Scooter Gennett

The Red Sox are, uh, doin’ just fine as is. But if you look at that same chart of teams sorted by Wins Above Average for each position, you’ll find the Red Sox at or near the bottom in all of baseball for three positions: catcher, second base, and third base. It’s possible that they’ll swoop on Realmuto or Wilson Ramos, but wouldn’t it make more sense for them to get someone who can play either second or third?

That would be Gennett, Probably. He only has a handful of games at third in his professional career, but his arrival wouldn’t have to be touted as the End of the Dustin Pedroia Era or Bad News for Sweet, Sweet Rafael Devers. It could just be, “Hey, Scooter’s here to help. We’ll find at-bats for everyone! And then the Red Sox could make it the end of the Dustin Pedroia Era or bad news for Devers, but, you know, quietly.

My only concern with this deal is that the Red Sox don’t have a great farm system, partially because they’ve been promoting a lot of their best prospects over the years, and the Reds don’t have to deal him for anything less than the perfect deal. Which means the Red Sox might have to part with someone off the 25-man roster. Like Rafael D

[apple whizzes by my head]

Like Rafae

[pineapple whizzes by my head]

Like Ra

[six coconuts and a newspaper vending machine whiz by my head]

Look, like I said, I’m not here to create elaborate fake trades. Y’all figure out what you need to do, but it would hurt to get Gennett. At the same time, the Red Sox have the best rotation and bullpen, statistically, in baseball. A little push for the lineup would go a long way, especially in October.

The Rockies should trade with the White Sox and get Jose Abreu

Ian Desmond’s overall numbers aren’t pretty, but they belie how miserable his start to the season was. He’s probably fine. Ish. Fine-ish.

But here’s where the Rockies have ranked in first base production according to FanGraphs’ WAR over the last few years:

2018 - 29th
2017 - 29th
2016 - 27th
2015 - 24th

The last time they were any good, Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer were hitting the snot out of the ball, which was 1937 or so. This is a chronic problem for the Rockies, and while Abreu isn’t likely to turn his old-player skills into a fine wine, and he’s in the middle of his worst season, that’s just going to make him more affordable. He’s under team control next year, so he isn’t just a rental.

I would take the over on Abreu’s stats at Coors Field. The Rockies’ problem yet again is that they have a sneakily feckless lineup, and the easiest way to fix that would be to get a thumper at first base. Here’s one who might be discounted because of minor dings and scrapes, but the ceiling is worth the chance the Rockies would have to take.

The Brewers should trade with the Mets and get Jacob deGrom

It’s actually a very Brewers trade. They gave up Michael Brantley for a short burst of CC Sabathia brilliance, and they gave up Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi for a short burst of Zack Greinke. Dumping a pile of prospects for an ace-brand ace is very much what they do.

This would be a little different because the Brewers already gave up some of their best trade chips for Christian Yelich, so it’s not a perfect match. They can’t make their very best prospect untouchable and offer the Mets human anagram Lucas Erceg. They would have to part with, well, him. I’m not going to type it. I promised I wouldn’t type actual offers. But this one would be an obvious fit, with the Brewers parting with someone who would make them sigh and grumble and wail, and the Mets acquiring a prospect who has the whiff of can’t-miss to offer to their angry fans.

If you look at the top prospects in baseball, you’ll notice a common thread among the top half: Most of those prospects belong to teams who probably wouldn’t be interested in giving up anything for a short-term boost like deGrom, at least not right now. The Brewers would have some competition from every team in baseball, sure, but not all of them can offer a top-50 prospect. Not all of them would be willing to, either.

The Brewers could go small, with someone like Tyson Ross or Bartolo Colon. But it’s much more like them to go big. This would be the biggest, and I’ve decided that it should happen. Look at me, I’m banging my gavel. It’s official.

Lightning round!

The Giants should trade with the Reds and get Adam Duvall

You might not realize this, but there is a very vocal, very strange faction of Giants fans who complain about the Adam Duvall trade all the time. He’s having a miserable offensive season, but he fits the Giants’ luxury-tax aspirations, and his power and defense make him a strong-buy low candidate.

And it would make things quieter around here.

The Braves should trade with the Blue Jays and get J.A. Happ

I mean, sure, Anibal Sanchez is definitely going to keep pitching like he’s in his prime, and it’s silly of me to even question this.

But what this section presupposes is, maybe he won’t?

Happ is a free agent after the season, so the Braves wouldn’t have to worry about an expensive veteran being hard to displace when one of their 387 pitching prospects is ready next year. And they can afford to part with a couple prospects, what with them having 387 of them. They can pick their rental, but Happ is probably the best mix of effectiveness and reasonable cost.

The Yankees should trade with the Mets and get Noah Syndergaard

Because some men just want to watch the world burn.

The A’s came back from a 10-2 deficit in the seventh, and the Cubs are using position players to pitch in 7-1 games. This is silly, right?

When I turned on Tuesday night’s A’s-Rangers game, the A’s were losing, 10-2 in the seventh inning. I left to do a quick podcast, and when I came back, the A’s were losing, 10-8. A few minutes later, the game was tied, and by the time Khris Davis launched a three-run moon shot that disintegrated in the ionosphere, I was a giggling idiot. More so than usual, even. It was a fun game to watch from a distance.

It must have been a ludicrously fun game to watch intently. I was following it from the NBC Sports Bay Area studios, where there are plenty of A’s partisans, and I could hear the whoops and yelps with every walk, homer, and run. When Stephen Piscotty hit his game-tying home run in the ninth inning, I could hear post-game analyst Dallas Braden scream from hundreds of feet (and several rooms) away.

The A’s are ridiculous, and Tuesday night’s game would make any fan jealous. There’s nothing in sports that’s better than a comeback against insurmountable odds. But after appreciating the A’s and their silly season for a few seconds, my thoughts turned darker.

All I could think about is that beneath the fun, hip exoskeleton, Joe Maddon is a soulless actuary.

The connection goes like this: On Monday night, the Cubs were losing 7-1 in the top of the eighth inning, and Maddon brought in a position player to pitch. It happened to be exactly after the play that sent the Cubs’ win expectancy from 1 percent to 0 percent, according to Baseball-Reference, so it’s possible that Maddon was playing the numbers. It was still strange to see Anthony Rizzo’s goofy grin from the mound while the Cubs were still kinda sorta in the game.

If you’re a fan of baseball history, you might know about the last time the Cubs came back from six runs down in the eighth. It was a couple months ago, and it sure was a good thing that Maddon didn’t have Rizzo pitching in that game.

So, yes, Maddon gave up on a game in which the Cubs were down by six runs with four outs to go, which seems both wise and strange. This is a mostly an academic exercise because Rizzo (and the other position player who pitched, Victor Caratini) didn’t allow a run and the Cubs didn’t score another run. They were going to lose 99 times out of 100, if not 999 times out of 1,000, and Maddon saved his bullpen. He’s the genius, and I’m the dope whining about something on the internet.

This headline aged well:

More position players are pitching than ever before, and there’s a simple explanation why

The conclusion?

While baseball is cyclical and this could go the way of the stolen base, there’s very little risk to go with the measurable reward of keeping your bullpen fresh.

That argument is exactly what Maddon used when he was asked about the optics of giving up on a 7-1 game.

Yesterday was connected to Saturday, most specifically. Having to come out of the break and playing five games in four days and a day-night doubleheader impacted Monday’s game.

In the first Cubs game after the break, which was a day earlier than almost everyone else in baseball, Kyle Hendricks was pulled in the fifth inning, and six relievers combined to hold the lead. The doubleheader didn’t do them any favors, and the bullpen was moderately taxed. Here are all the batters faced from the Cubs relievers in each game after the All-Star break:

Steve Cishek had a day off after appearing in both games of a doubleheader. Carl Edwards was definitely fresh. Strop probably could have gone if needed, but remember that Brandon Morrow is on the DL.

With four outs to go, a normal manager probably would have used Edwards. Maddon chose to use position players in a mostly hopeless game to save one of his better relievers for the next game, though.

The Cubs did not win that next game, and Edwards didn’t pitch. They used Cishek to face seven batters, Chavez to face three, and the newly activated Eddie Butler to face nine. The immediate benefit of punting with a six-run deficit was Edwards getting an extra day of rest. It’s not inconceivable that will pay dividends in October.

All he had to do was make it harder for his team to have a rousing, once-every-decade comeback win like the A’s had.

Leave it to Maddon to make me think he’s less fun for having his position players pitch.

Before writing this, I had several headlines already in mind. “The A’s are a ridiculously fun baseball team and Joe Maddon is trying too hard” was one. “The A’s are proof that Joe Maddon is being too cute” was another.

After writing this, though, I think I changed my mind. The trend of position players pitching probably isn’t going away soon. Bullpens are the heartbeat of the modern game, for better and very much for worse, and managers’ careers can be defined by how well they manage them. We might stop seeing stars like Rizzo pitch after a comebacker gets someone hurt, but the general idea of giving up on a game to keep a bullpen fresh is here to stay.

Remember this graph?

Well, let’s just update that:

Maddon has used five position players to pitch since the All-Star break. And, you know what? Part of the reason Edwards was fresh enough to be used in that 7-1 game was because Maddon used three position players to absorb innings in a blowout earlier in the week.

However, if we’re being honest, the A’s probably aren’t going to win the World Series this year. That’s not a slight against them, just a nod to the 1/8 odds they’ll roughly have if they even reach the postseason. Most teams won’t win the World Series, and they’ll need something else to convince their fans that baseball is worth watching.

The A’s got something to convince their fans, and it was a single game that they’ll remember for years. Remember that time the A’s came back from that huge deficit in the eighth will be a powerful force for anyone who can answer “yes,” and the wonder of the Game Without a Clock will be reinforced for a huge swath of people. Making that kind of comeback harder — signaling to your team to focus on tomorrow — seems like a great way to avoid this kind of historically fun game.

At the same time, the odds are against these two scenarios ever colliding, so maybe it’s more likely that the fans will have more fun when Carl Edwards is slightly less gassed in the NLCS and pumps a fastball by Eric Hosmer*. And if you’re busy being hyper-pragmatic about bullpen usage and pitching position players in non-blowouts, there’s still a chance that the silliness will still come to you. Especially the NL teams, who will be playing with a de facto DH, after all.

* the second half is gonna be wild, y’all

So I hate to do this, but I started with an idea that Maddon was screwing with his team’s chances to have a memorable comeback, and I’m ending with the belief that he’s probably doing the right thing. The more position players pitch, the less exciting it is, and a little piece of me is dying away, but I also understand the strategy behind it. Keeping bullpens fresh is more important than waiting for that A’s-like comeback that might not happen for another decade.

Joe Maddon doesn’t hate fun. He’s just trying to reallocate the fun to a likelier date. In today’s wacky bullpen-dependent game, I don’t blame him. Even if I hate the idea that we might miss out on a comeback like the one the A’s enjoyed on Tuesday night.

Because, friends, that was a very, very, very fun baseball thing, and I’m going to keep being overprotective of games like that.

Joe Maddon left the Rays, but there’s a piece of him still there, and it’s been weaponized.

In the ninth inning, with a one-run lead against the Yankees, the Rays brought in a left-hander, Jonny Venters, to face Greg Bird. So far, this is a normal baseball story. Except they didn’t want to take right-hander Sergio Romo out of the game, so they put him at third base.

Thus endeth the normal baseball story.

You might remember the headline “The Rays played a pitcher at first base,” which was a very accurate headline. That was fun and worthwhile, but upon closer inspection, if there’s going to be a position that best suits a pitcher, first base might be it. They’re trained to cover first and catch baseballs all spring, so it isn’t that much of a paradigm shift to jog to a closer base and accept a much harder throw. That isn’t to say that all pitchers can play first, but that it’s a spot where they’re the least likely to be embarrassed.

Third base, though? Mercy.

That’s where Romo was setting up against Bird. Close enough to guard against the bunt. Also close enough to get murdered on anything hit to the opposite field. How much of a problem was that with Bird?

Not a problem in the slightest. But there was one wrinkle, though, and that’s that Bird had bunted against the shift for a single in the second inning of this very game. How tempting was it for him to test the pitcher who was out of position? HOW TEMPTING WAS IT?

Not tempting enough. After two quick strikes, Bird took a couple of balls and then grounded out to first. Romo’s day — career? — at third base was over, and he came back in to pitch.

Two batters later, the Yankees got the go-ahead run on first base because Matt Duffy, a real third baseman, made an error, and I hate-love this stupid sport so much.

With two on and one out, Romo got a pop-up and a strikeout to complete an extremely rugged save. And because of the chicanery, the box score will turn your brain into mashed Nilla wafers:

Send that, and only that, to some baseball-loving friends and family, and see if they can explain it without unplugging themselves and plugging themselves back in. Sergio Romo played third base in a one-run game, and then he came in to save the game that he also deserved a hold for.

I don’t know when the next postseason appearance for the Rays will be, but I’m very happy they exist right now.

Did you think a trade was dumb, and it turned out to be great? Did you get excited about a trade that turned out to be horrible? We’re here to listen, not judge.

Max Muncy is hitting like Willie Stargell, and we’re supposed to pretend to know how this stupid sport works.

But not knowing that a breakout player is going to break out is just one of the ways baseball messes with you. There’s also the shame of completely whiffing on your analysis of a trade or a signing. I’ll keep reminding the world of my awful Nelson Cruz take because I deserve it. There’s something so pleasingly arrogant about snap analysis after a big transaction, and we keep doing it because there is no real punishment for our hubris.

The MLB Trade Deadline is almost here, which means it’s a good time to look back and roast our stupid opinions from years ago. Note that you can’t make fun of the trades that didn’t happen, or your fake trades that seem lopsided with the benefit of hindsight. For example, a couple of years ago, I suggested that the Dodgers should trade Corey Seager and Joc Pederson for David Price, which was dumb. But maaaaaybe the Dodgers would have won the World Series with Price that year. Did you ever think about that, smartypants?

No, focus on the reactions you had to deals at the time. Get it all out. This is a safe space and a judgment-free zone. We all have bad baseball opinions, and it’s time to atone for them.

For example, here are some dumb baseball things that I actually believed ...

The Brewers were going to regret trading Matt LaPorta for a rental

That rental was CC Sabathia, who had one of the truly great post-trade performances in baseball history. After a shaky first start, Sabathia pumped out three straight complete games, and he put up a 1.65 ERA in his 17 starts, which was a big deal back in in 2008. It’s a big deal now, too, but it was DEFINITELY a big deal at the tail end of the Mitchell Report Era.

To get him, though, the Brewers had to give up Matt LaPorta, who was absolutely everything that post-James baseball nerds were trained to love. He was a high-OBP thumper with a high first-round pedigree. Position? We don’t need no stinkin’ positions. Gimme those walks and gimme those dingers. Before the 2008 season, he was the 23rd-best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America. He put up a 1065 OPS in his introduction to professional baseball, and he was crushing the ball in Double-A when the Brewers traded him for a rental.

YOU’RE GOING TO TRADE THE NEXT JIM THOME FOR A FREAKING RENTAL? ARE YOU DAFT?

Turns out that [checks] LaPorta wasn’t the next Jim Thome. After some low-average seasons with the Indians, he pootered out and drifted away. While Sabathia didn’t exactly lead the Brewers to the promised land, I probably shouldn’t have been concerned with the slugger they gave up.

They also traded a player to be named later for Sabathia, but it’s not like that was going to make a difference.

Yu Darvish was going to make the Dodgers unstoppable

This one I actually published, like a dingus. The Dodgers were reportedly choosing between Justin Verlander, Sonny Gray, and Yu Darvish, and I ranked them accordingly:

1. Yu Darvish
2. Sonny Gray
3. Justin Verlander

Justin Verlander was done. Finished. He was a high-4s ERA guy now, and he was owed a lot of money, to boot.

Gray was young and controllable. Even as he was buried under a pile of red flags, that’s the guy the Dodgers would want.

Unless they would want the proven ace, the guy who would benefit most from coming to Dodger Stadium. Yes, even though he was just a rental, this is who the Dodgers needed. This was finally the win-now move they’d been tip-toeing around for years. They were invincible. They am become death, destroyer of postseasons. In his first start with his new team, Darvish was absolutely dominant.

Then Darvish had one of the worst World Series performances in history. Maybe the worst. And it all came after dominance in the NLDS and NLCS. It was so weird.

And it just so happened that the guy I pooh-poohed was the actual correct answer. Justin Verlander molted and became a Cy Young candidate again, right when the Astros needed it most.

Against the Dodgers.

Which seems ironic, at least in an alanistic sense.

The Dodgers probably should have traded for Justin Verlander instead.

Sorry.

The Red Sox were going to regret trading Nomar Garciaparra

The Red Sox did not regret trading Nomar Garciaparra.

The exact trade was strange — a four-team deal with a lotta ins, a lotta outs — but as best as I can figure out, the Red Sox gave up their Face of the Franchise for Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera, which shouldn’t be a sentence that aged well.

And yet, do the Red Sox win the World Series without Cabrera’s strong hitting in the ALCS? If you want to go full galaxy-brain, you could say that you don’t know if the Cubs win the World Series with DJ LeMahieu, who was traded away with Tyler Colvin, who was drafted with the pick the Cubs got after Garciaparra stunk the next year. Not that LeMahieu isn’t a good player, but we’re talking butterfly effect here.

The Red Sox steered into the skid, doing something that looked for all the world to be curse-y, and they came out the other side as big-market bullies with all of the haughtiness that three championships bring. This should have been another example of the Red Sox getting stuck in a vending machine, but it ended up being how they broke free of the vending machine.

Carlos Gomez was exactly what the Astros needed to put them over the top

Not only was Gomez the perfect missing piece for the Astros in 2015, but the Mets were fools for letting a little “physical evaluation” scuttle their plans to acquire him. Even though Gomez was struggling that year, his previous three years were electric and excellent. What were the odds that he was in the middle of a serious, prolonged decline?

Oops.

To get Gomez, the Astros had to trade away Josh Hader, Domingo Santana, and Brett Phillips, all of whom might help a team in the present and future. We can argue about the merits and demerits of a person who took pride in being an absolute asshole online, but the Astros would quietly like to stuff Hader into a sack and bring him back to Houston, controversy and all. Winning is more important than all that icky stuff, after all, and it always will be. Sports!

Gomez was broken, stumbling to a 670 OPS for the rest of the season and flummoxing the Astros the season after that.

The Mets probably would have won the World Series with Gomez, of course. I have no evidence for this, but I believe it to be true. At the very least, we have one of the most Mets things to ever happen because of Gomez:

Imagine crying because you were going to leave the Mets, not the other way around.

The Giants were absolute morons for giving up John Bowker for Javier Lopez

Ah, my crowning trade-deadline meltdown. I’m proud of it now. Before teams turned the postseason into bullpen-manic late-inning festivals of whiffs, the conventional wisdom was simple: Don’t give up too much for relievers. They’re just not that valuable.

And here the Giants were, dealing a power-hitting, low-cost outfielder for a danged LOOGY. My reaction was calm and measured, of course.

If Lopez is perfect, shutting down lefties with runners on at every opportunity, and if the Giants make the playoffs by a single game, maybe this isn’t a complete debacle. Maybe that would give the Giants some kind of value.

So let’s all just hope for that unlikely sequence of events.

Disgusting. Just disgusting.

The Giants won the division by two games, I’ll have you know. They did so with Lopez being utterly dominant in the regular season and postseason, shutting down lefties, just like he was supposed to. Then he hung around and contributed just as mightily for the Giants next two championships. He was like a special Magic: The Gathering card that you could keep in your sock and play whenever it made the most sense.

I award myself bonus points for a freaking Luke Scott comparison breaking the format of the site.

So, yes, I’ve been dumb. And after the trade deadline, I’ll post something about the “winners and losers of the MLB trade deadline,” and it will be useless trash. My only request is that you click on that link and all of the links that will follow because my kids don’t deserve to pay for my sins, and these clicks are putting a roof over their heads.

Now it’s your turn. What were you excited about that flopped? What did you think was a disaster that turned out a-ok? C’mon, be honest. We’re all sharing here.

Tell us about your dumbest trade deadline opinions. Thank you.

The Cubs are looking for rotation help. The Rangers have a veteran to offer. Is this a match?

Cole Hamels has a 4.72 ERA, but that’s okay, because his FIP is 5.20. He’s five homers away from tying his career high, and he leads the American League in HBP. There are a lot of reasons to be wary of Hamels, and only one of them is the fact that he’s 34 years old and owed several million dollars (including a $6 million buyout for next season.)

Hamels is a living, breathing pile of caveat emptor, which is perfect for the 2018 MLB trade deadline.

And it would appear that the Cubs are interested.

The Rumor

Joel Sherman of the New York Post suggests that the Cubs are “making inroads” in their efforts to acquire Hamels. I am taking this tweet very literally and picturing people in hard hats with pickaxes trying to make this trade happen. The Cubs’ rotation is in disarray, which is one of the reasons they’re using so many position players to pitch. Could this be a fit for them?

Why it makes sense for the Cubs to trade for Cole Hamels

It makes sense if your scouts are telling them emphatically that Hamels can still anchor a rotation, and you really, really, really trust your scouts.

Because the stats aren’t pretty. It’s not like he’s suffering from a freaky-high BABIP, and his FIP isn’t whispering secrets about his ERA being a liar. He’s getting hit hard and giving up lots of runs, which is kinda sorta the opposite of what he’s supposed to do.

The raw stuff might be a different story. His velocity isn’t bad (he’s throwing as hard as he was from 2006 through 2013), and his strikeout rate rebounded from a career-worst mark set last year. He’s still getting batters to chase as much as he has in the past, and he’s still missing bats. This would actually be the fourth-best contact rate of his career.

But if you’re a believer in the metrics that describe the quality of contact, you’ll find that Hamels is getting absolutely crushed this year compared to previous seasons. When he allows a fly ball, it’s going out of the park at nearly twice the rate of his career averages.

The Cubs would want him, though, because it sure looks like his floor is that of a league-average pitcher who can absorb innings. He’s had an extremely rough July, but he’s pitched into the sixth inning in 16 of his 20 starts this year. The Cubs are having problems with starters getting bounced early, so they’ll take all the help they can get.

Hamels’ ceiling is that of something much more than a league-average pitcher. His ERA is unfortunate now, yes, but don’t forget that Justin Verlander’s ERA was close to 5.00 at the start of the second half last year, too. It probably would have made more sense to pay attention to his career rather than a couple months, and that might go for Hamels, too. He was worth about three wins above replacement last year, and five the year before that, so maybe those are the signs we should be paying attention to.

Maybe, from the Cubs’ perspective, it’s a good thing he’s struggling. Keeps the costs low. It’s possible that Hamels is just a boring innings-eater who is closer to replacement level than the All-Star Game, but that kind of pitcher would still help the Cubs. If the first half is a blip, they might get much more.

Why it makes sense for the Rangers to trade Cole Hamels to the Cubs

Money, for sure. But have you seen the Rangers lately? They’re bad. They aren’t going to exercise Hamels’ option over the offseason, and they would be extremely wary of offering him a qualifying offer, too. They need to get what they can right now, even if they need to pay down salary to do it.

They aren’t going to get a quarter of the prospects it took to get Hamels, but baseball sure likes to pluck your nose hairs out, one by one. If they can get one interesting guy — just one — they’ll have done themselves a favor. Without a trade, they’re on the hook for roughly $14 million. With a trade, they’ll probably be on the hook for $10 million and have a prospect to boot. That’s a win.

Rumor grade

I’ll give this one a B. The Cubs thought they were set with a rotation of Lester/Quintana/Hendricks/Darvish/Chatwood, but, boy, has that been a mixed bag. Getting a semi-reliable starter is a definite priority for them, and it would make sense that they’re looking for some cost certainty, especially when it shouldn’t take the organization’s best prospects.

I, for one, would be very interested to see the Yankees hit against Lester, Quintana, and Hamels in the World Series, but that’s because I’m a troll. If you don’t look at spookily specific situations of lefty-heavy doom, this trade rumor makes sense.

The Nationals are just .500 and staring up at two teams in the division. They should trust the nerds, though.

According to FanGraphs’ postseason odds, there are only six teams in baseball with a better chance to win the 2018 World Series than the Washington Nationals. If this seems surprising to you, this is because you watch baseball. Computers don’t. Get your nose out of ... yourselves ... and watch a ballgame, computers.

The Nationals are .500 as of this writing. They’re .500 over their last 10 games. If there’s any reason to think they won’t be .500 over their next 10 games, it’s because they’ve been often been worse than that for long stretches recently. And this is all before you get to the weird neck problem that Stephen Strasburg is going through.

However, that might be the benefit of listening to the dispassionate computers. They’re not confused by small samples and sleights of hand. They get to look at Bryce Harper’s career and see a budding Hall of Famer, not the broken player who struck out three times against Dan Straily on Thursday night, and that should make their predictions more reliable. In theory.

But if you’re looking for reasons why the Nationals should think they’re still in it, here is a program that looks at hundreds of seasons and thousands of seasons and comes to that exact conclusion.

On the other hand, just think of all the prospects they could get from a complete fire sale.

Ken Rosenthal stops short of suggesting the Nationals are considering a fire sale, noting that they still have hopes of re-signing Bryce Harper in the offseason, and the odds for that would go down with a trade. That makes sense, so we’ll exercise our better judgment and refrain from speculating about a Harper trade, even though it would be really, really, really fun to do so.

Even without including Harper or Max Scherzer or Strasburg (or the $38 million he’s owed next season), though, the Nationals could still have a supremely productive trade deadline. If you assume that the core of Scherzer, Strasburg, Trea Turner, Anthony Rendon, Adam Eaton, and Juan Freaking Soto will allow them to contend next year, which isn’t exactly going out on a limb, the goal would be to trade the luxury players who probably wouldn’t get a mention in a 400-word preseason preview.

Players like Matt Adams, who has been a delightful find and a productive force in the lineup, but isn’t so important to the overall foundation of the Nationals that GM Mike Rizzo would run around in a panic without him. That goes for Mark Reynolds, who was unfairly ignored this offseason and has been a revelation for, oh, the third straight year. Both of those guys would appeal to contending teams. Picture the Nationals pushing a cart and ringing a bell down a filthy 1800s London street, screaming “Dingers, ‘ere! Fresh dingers!” The line would be around the block.

Beyond those two, you have the found money of Jeremy Hellickson and the cost certainty of Gio Gonzalez. Teams are scrambling for the J.A. Happs and Cole Hamelseses of the world, and Gonzalez would fit in nicely with any team looking for a rotation upgrade.

It would be rougher to trade Sean Doolittle, as the fans have gotten extremely fond of walk-free dominance, and they love to scream “DOOOOOOOOOOOO” whenever they spot him in the wild. At the same time, he’s the one player on the team who could fetch a top-40 prospect but isn’t necessarily a cornerstone for the next several years. The Nationals would at least have to listen.

The plan would be to stockpile prospects like the Braves did in their sell-offs, except the Nationals would already be far ahead. They still have Victor Robles waiting to explode and Carter Kieboom advancing quickly. Their core is still young, with the exception of the best pitcher in baseball. But the consolation prize there is that the best pitcher in baseball is still the best pitcher in baseball. This is a team that is built to win immediately, but there would be a way to exchange their second-tier pieces for extra underpaid players, who would help them spend even more to acquire more (and possibly better) second-tier pieces. It would be trading their cake and signing it too.

All it would cost them is a chance to contend in what could be Bryce Harper’s final season with the team, which would be a miserable coda to a sneaky legacy of sadness. The Nationals were supposed to run away with the NL East yet again, but instead, they might sell like they’re common White Sox.

The Strasburg news almost pushes me over the edge, but I’ll stick with the idea that the Nationals need to pretend like their window is closing, even if we’re not even sure that there is a window for a team that features the best living pitcher and a 19-year-old who hits like George Brett. Every contending season is a gift, and the Nationals would be better off trusting in their Pythagorean record (four games better than their actual record) and have faith that the cold, unfeeling computers are right.

The Nationals should be better. There are statistical indicators that suggest this. There are historical indicators that suggest this. Common sense suggests this. And even though they’re seven games back in the NL East and 4.5 games behind the second wild card, there’s a strong argument to make that they’re the most talented team in the division.

Remember the baseball truism: If you have enough talent to have a wild, productive fire sale, you probably have enough talent to contend, too. The computers think the Nationals will be fine. It’s only the people who have watched Harper flail and the Nationals fall down the stairs in every NLDS who are worried.

Trust the computers this time. The worst-case scenario would be that the Nationals would still have a young, competitive team with money to spend next year. An extra pile of B- and C-prospects wouldn’t change their fortunes much. But giving up on a disappointing team a couple of months before what could be a rather disappointing offseason seems like a great way to alienate a fan base that still buys tickets.

Either the Phillies or Braves will probably win the division. Two other teams will be playing in the Wild Card Game. But the Nationals are too close to give up just yet.

If they screw up these next three games against the Marlins, sure, revisit what it means to be three games under .500 and looking up at six teams in the standings. My guess is that they’ll go for it. My other guess is that they’ll make August and September more exciting than you think.

That walkoff, plus Vladimir Guerrero’s inaccurate bronzing, catching baseballs with babies, and Cooperstown Spoonerisms.

The all-star break ended, and baseball stumbled around the town square drunk again. I was gone for a week, and then the next week started and there were, like, three or four almost-no-hitters, two or them by players the Cardinals literally made up the day of the game, a couple of trades that sent veteran lefties to teams that could better appreciate them, a Rays reliever playing third base, a violation of the unwritten rules of batting practice attire, at least one extremely wild comeback from a team down eight runs, six players getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, position players pitching, other position players pitching, and more position players pitching.

Oh, and they gave out the Heart and Hustle Awards.

Baseball is wild, man.

But baseball isn’t just wild. It’s strange. It’s confusing. It’s deceptive and fun and silly and horrible and perfect. Baseball is the sport that’s supposed to be dreadfully slow and somnambulant, and yet it’s also the sport that’s impossible to keep up with, even if you try. Baseball is all of this.

Baseball is hard.

Really, really hard. But before we get too deep into this, we must also remember that ...

Baseball is good, actually

There’s probably a reason why I’m going to the minor-league well after a week that was overstuffed with baseball. I think my brain shut down.

But I’m also a sucker for walk-off inside-the-park home runs. Like, they breathe life into every last part of my soul.

This was posted to YouTube on July 26, and as of this writing, it has 45 views. Six of those were probably me. I know that MiLB.com has its own video page, which is certainly where the bulk of its highlights are consumed, but those numbers suggest to me that this special, special moment has been criminally overlooked.

It’s the 13th inning, which would already make a game-winning inside-the-park home run that much more special, but there’s more. This was a game that was supposed to be played two days earlier but the conditions of the field wouldn’t let them, so it was made up as the second game of a doubleheader. Because it was a doubleheader, it was scheduled for just seven innings, which means this walk-off came six innings after the game was supposed to be over.

Beyond that, the minor leagues are using that stupid start-a-runner-at-second rule in extra innings. In every inning after the seventh, there would be a runner at second and no outs. Here’s how that went:

In the top of the eighth, the Chiefs scored a run. In the bottom of the eighth, the Tides scored a run.

In the top of the 10th, the Chiefs scored a run. In the bottom of the 10th, the Tides scored a run.

In the top of the 11th, the Chiefs scored a run. In the bottom of the 11th, the Tides scored a run.

In the top of the 12th, the Chiefs scored a run. In the bottom of the 12th, the Tides scored a run.

In the top of the 13th, the Chiefs scored a run. In the bottom of the 13th, the Tides said NO MORE OF THIS, BASEBALL DEMONS, I CAST THEE OUT.

After 20 innings of baseball on a day when there were only supposed to be 14, there was a glorious walk-off inside-the-park home run. And you know who got to see it?

Those people. Those two behind home plate, who were hardy enough to say, “13 innings of minor league baseball in the second half of a doubleheader? Oh, hell yes. We’ll get to sit right behind home plate, and maybe there will be a walk-off inside-the-park home run.”

That was for you, hardy fans. That was for you.

Let us study this baseball thing

Let’s just jump right into it: Are you more impressed with a dude catching a home run ball while holding a baby, or are you more impressed an announcer catching a foul ball as he makes the call? This week gives us the chance to discuss this.

Here’s the dad:

And here’s the announcer (click here for the video if you’re reading on Google AMP, Apple News, or AOL Glisten):

Reaction time

The homer took several seconds to arrive at its destination. The foul ball took just over two seconds.

Advantage: announcer

Difficulty

I’ve worn a baby. Played guitar while wearing a baby, walked to the store while wearing a baby, and completed all 50 Xbox Achievements for Civilization Revolution while wearing a baby. But I have not done any of these while holding a baby. That’s a different animal. Making sure you don’t drop the baby is hard enough when it’s a normal situation. Trying to shield it from death while also lunging for a souvenir is much, much harder. And that’s a really young baby, so you know it’s not giving him any help.

The announcer’s job is literally to watch every single pitch intently. There’s no one who is more prepared.

Advantage: dad

Style points

Oh, this is going to get people angry, but I’m not going with the dad. It doesn’t take much to angle the body in such a way to protect the child, while still giving yourself a chance to catch the ball. I would argue that any reaction that’s not “Yeah, later” is neglectful because you’re dealing with potential chuckleheads in the seats around you, as well as ricochets. Just get that kid and run.

OK, fine, here are a few style points for the backhand catch, which was pretty badass.

No, I’m going with Roxy Bernstein making the call and the catch at the same time, with a perfect “And I caught it” in rhythm to punctuate the unlikeliness. Did Vin Scully ever do that?

Not only did he not, but the first search result for that query was this same play.

Advantage: announcer

Yeah, I’m going announcer. We see dads catching baseballs with babies. It’s hard. It’s special. But it’s not that rare. Announcers making a one-handed catch and still having the presence of mind to make the perfect call, well, that’s a unicorn, alright. This debate is over.

It’s still cool to catch a ball while holding a baby, don’t get me wrong. I’ll take the announcer every day, though.

Damnit, Daniel. Look what you did.

You had a simple job, Daniel: Save the lead. But you couldn’t even do that, could you? Now it’s over. We lost. Because you couldn’t even do your job.

No, no, you’re not getting on this bus. You need to walk to the hotel. Come on, Jon. Come on, Domingo. Let’s let him think about what he did wrong.

Clean your shit up, Daniel.

I’ve come to terms with the reality that bronze sculpting is really, really hard

Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

That plaque doesn’t feature a likeness of Vladimir Guerrero. That’s Scoober, my buddy from college. Classic Scoober, getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, right? I remember hanging out with Scoobs at the Dorfler house, playing Twisted Metal 2 all freaking night, and now he’s in the Hall of Fame. Ha ha, that guy.

OK, so this is better than Ronaldo. It’s better than Brandi Chastain. It’s definitely better than Lucille Ball. But it’s still Scoober and not Vladimir Guerrero.

Let’s just all agree to not sculpt our heroes in bronze. Look, it’s not you, bronze, it’s me. But also you. It’s just too difficult to pick up the nuances of a human’s face in this medium. From now on, every Hall of Fame likeness will be created by a caricature artist down by the boardwalk. It’ll cost $10 for a small, $14 for a large, and everyone will be happy.

Peace out, Scoober. See you around.

What Shohei Did

There are two ways follow the prompt of that header. The first is to show a video of Shohei Ohtani’s home run:

The second is to show you the face that Tyler Skaggs made after watching said home run:

Either one is effective. The larger point is that Shohei Ohtani is back, and his elbow is functional enough to allow him to hit baseballs to the moon, where they will remain forever. I really, really didn’t think we’d get the chance to appreciate that again this year.

Baseball picture of the week

Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images

There are a lot of reasons why I like this picture. The first is the obvious one, which is the unbridled joy of George Springer, one of the more likable players in baseball. From his efforts in helping children who stutter to his role as the unofficial clubhouse DJ, there aren’t a lot of folks who have a bad word to say about him.

The second is that we’re reminded that Jose Altuve is not the only diminutive baseball player out there. He’s not the only one on his team. That’s Tony Kemp who’s being swallowed up in Springer’s embrace, and it reminds you that there is more than one way to skin a baseball. They come in all shapes and sizes, they do.

The third thing I like is that it allowed me to pretend it was the freeze frame from the opening credits of an ‘80s sitcom.

The fourth thing is that Evan Gattis is behind them and about to vivisect them both as part of his dark ritual. This seemed funnier when I first noticed it, but now I’m just worried.

Mostly, though, it’s the unbridled joy. Come get some of that unbridled joy. George Springer has been keeping it warm for you.

This week in McGwire/Sosa

Hmm, the idea for this was to keep a weekly tally of the home run chase to see where they were at different points of the season, so that we could have some sort of perspective of just how many homers they were hitting. But then there was the all-star break and I took a vacation, and ... well, it’s been a while.

So to catch you up: it looks like they were hitting dingers.

McGwire

23 AB this week
324 AB for the season

2 HR this week
44 HR for the season

.217/.400/.478 this week
.296/.476/.741 for the season

Sosa
29 AB this week
404 AB for the season

2 HR this week
38 HR for the season

.241/.353/.483 this week
.309/.374/.634 for the season

Sosa is on pace to hit 61 homers after this week. McGwire is on pace to hit 73. There’s some cosmic symmetry in those numbers, even if they didn’t know them yet. The first was Sosa being on a Roger Maris pace, while the second was McGwire being on a Barry Bonds pace.

Neither of them would land exactly on those marks, but they were definitely cranking enough dingers to stay in the public eye.

Spoonerism of the week

Here are the 2018 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, ranked in order of how much their spoonerism sounds like a real baseball player:

6. Gladimir Vuerrero

Baseball would be better with a Gladimir, but it’s certainly not a name we’ve come to expect.

5. Hevor Troffman

You laugh now, but one day you’ll be taking your kid to preschool, and he or she will tell you a story about a Hevor. The next year, there will be three Hevors in the class. By the second kid rolls through, every other kid will be named Hevor, and there won’t be a thing you can do about it.

This ranks low, though, because Troffman just isn’t a realistic last name.

4. Jipper Chones

It’s a fine name, but nothing about it screams “baseball.” No, this is the lead character of a BBC cartoon that your kid loves. It’s a turtle or some crap, and he’s always screaming “I WANNA WATCH JIPPER CHONES” while you’re on a conference call, and the only reason you’re working remotely in the first place is because the kid has a fever, and he’s just screaming “I WANNA WATCH JIPPER CHONES” over and over again like a cheeping blue jay.

He’d never heard of the show before, but Hevor told him about it.

3. Tim Jhome

I sounds like the winner. But there’s something off with the “J” in front of the “h.” It works for Jhonny Peralta, but I think

2. Tralan Ammell

There was a Tralan Ammell drafted in the third round this year. Don’t look that up. Out of Florida International. No, Seton Hall. He has a hole in his swing, but the tools are impressive.

Also, it’s pronounced “tray-lan” and not “traw-lan.” It probably should be “traw-lan,” but the man has an ear.

1. Mack Jorris

.240/.290/.468, 19 HR, -1.1 dWAR.

Nationals GM Mike Rizzo says Harper isn’t going anywhere. We should believe him.

Last night at around 11:00 ET, Mark Feinsand dropped the bombshell that the Nationals are shopping Bryce Harper. While reporters acted calmly, the rest of the internet was set ablaze. Harper to the Indians? Harper to the Yankees? Harper to the A’s?

Less than 12 hours later, Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post talked to Nationals GM Mike Rizzo, who emphatically stated that Bryce Harper isn’t going anywhere.

Our job today is to see if we believe him. Let’s grade the rumor that Harper isn’t going anywhere.

This post will have the lifespan of a mayfly, so we’ll have to be quick. There are reasons to trade Harper. There are good reasons to trade him. He’s a pending free agent. And while the Nationals’ farm system isn’t bare, every team can use an infusion of prospects, and Harper would bring back a bigger return from another team right now than whatever the Nats could expect to get from draft picks if he left in free agency. They’re looking to re-sign Harper and get some of those hometown fuzzies, but the agent in question is Scott Boras. He doesn’t do hometown fuzzies, so the advantage is lost.

But there are reasons to keep him, though. There is something to be said for the continuity of keeping a potential Hall of Famer* in the organization as you try to sign him to a 10-year-deal. The ideal scenario for a situation like this is the Aroldis Chapman trade, in which the Yankees dealt their closer, got a franchise cornerstone in return, and then signed Chapman back that offseason.

* If you’re gonna yell at me and cite four months of batting average as evidence that the previous six years don’t mean anything, take a walk around the block or something

That scenario is incredibly rare, though. Boras seems to have a way of going with the team offering the most money, which means the minor offense of trading a player away shouldn’t affect the negotiations much, but it’s almost like there’s something psychological about a team dealing a player away at the deadline. We’re going in a different direction, it seems to say. One that doesn’t involve you. Now go on, git.

Perhaps the most salient argument against a Harper trade is that the Nationals would want too much, and rightly so. If he’s really a .220 hitter now, it would be one of the greatest collapses in baseball history, and other teams know that it’s far likelier that he’ll improve. The Nats would still be selling low, though. To the point where it’s not a given that the compensatory draft picks would be a huge step down.

Then there’s the matter where the Nationals are still pretty freaking good. Maybe not by record, but when it comes to raw talent. FanGraphs still gives them a solid chance at the postseason, even if they’re a game under .500. The Braves and Phillies are talented and young, which might be the blessing-curse the Nationals need to sneak back in the race. It would take a winning streak, possibly a fortuitously timed series sweep. But it’s possible.

Mostly, though, it’s the message that trading Harper would send. You follow baseball in the internet. You’re in the bubble. It’s nice here. There’s tea and finger sandwiches. But a huge, huge swath of the general ticket-buying population are completely oblivious about the granular details that go into a decision like this. They don’t think about team control and the value of pre-arbitration prospects or Scott Boras or FanGraphs postseason odds. They just think things like ...

Man, they traded Bryce Harper? Guess this team is done for. End of an era.

If that seems hyperbolic, have another finger sandwich. I’ve interacted with Giants fans who are hardcore enough to stay up past midnight to watch two giggling idiots talk about their team, but still oblivious enough to ask questions like, “Should the Giants trade Hunter Pence for prospects?” This is the very silent majority, and they’re both very silent and very much a majority. Trading Harper for anything but the best prospects wouldn’t be worth it.

The Nationals aren’t getting the best prospects for Harper.

They listened. They were right to listen. They didn’t get the offer they wanted. Now it’s our turn to listen when the GM says that Harper isn’t going anywhere. I’ll give the rumor that the Nats aren’t trading him a solid A. If another team wants to come over the top and shovel prospects at the Nationals because Harper is the missing piece, hey, that’s a lot of fun.

It’s not going to happen, though. Welcome to the new Nationals, same as the old Nationals.

Bonus content: We have seven OK-sure-whateverers, which are somewhere between the winners and losers.

It’s that time of year, where we all ignore the fact that the Major League Baseball postseason is nonsense. Baseball starts drinking on Oct. 1, and when it wakes up in the first week of November, the smoke alarm is going off and there’s a horse in the bathtub. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, but we’re supposed to pretend like we can predict winners and losers at the trade deadline.

Heck yeah, we’re supposed to pretend like we can predict winners and losers at the trade deadline. It’s fun. So even though you might be from the future and laughing at my simplistic analysis, just know that I’m more interested in being fun than right. Which is good, considering this won’t be right.

Thought the Astros should have traded for Yu Darvish instead of Justin Verlander last year, for example.

Hey, it could have worked, you don’t know.

But you clicked, so I’ll write. Here are the winners and losers from the 2018 MLB trade deadline:

Winners

Rays

Acquired: Tommy Pham, Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow, Jalen Beeks, bonus pool money, players to be named later

Traded: Chris Archer, Jonny Venters, Nathan Eovaldi, Matt Andriese, Justin Wilson, Genesis Cabrera, Roel Ramirez, Michael Perez, Brian Shaffer

They have the payroll of a medium-sized Quiznos now, which I guess is part of the point. I’m not a fan of baseball’s current economic structure, and I’m hesitant to heap too much praise on a team trying to cut costs.

Still, as long as this is the framework, the Rays are within their rights to exploit it. And, baby, they’re exploiting it with aplomb. They’ll have an outfield of Meadows/Pham/Kiermaier, which is built to win now and for the distant future. They won’t have their ace, but they’ll have pitchers who are majors-ready or close to it coming back.

These deals aren’t for toolsy A-ballers who are five years away. This is the Rays trying to buy their cake at a yard sale and eat it, too. It’s just crazy enough to work, and I’m very impressed by the their ability to walk this weird, thrifty tightrope.

Mmmmmm, yard-sale cake.

Dodgers

Acquired: Manny Machado, Brian Dozier, John Axford, Dylan Floro, Zach Neal

Traded: Yusniel Diaz, Dean Kremer, Zach Pop, Rylan Bannon, Breyvic Valera, Luke Raley, Logan Forsythe, Devin Smeltzer, Corey Copping, James Marinan, Aneurys Zabala

The Dodgers don’t like trading prospects if they don’t have to, and they certainly gave up a lot of interesting players, Kremer has the gaudy strikeout totals, and Bannon hasn’t stopped hitting as a professional. That’s before you get to Diaz, who is supposed to be the centerpiece of the deal. It’s a lot for two months of production and the postseason.

At the same time, this is a franchise that was a single lousy game away from a World Series win last year, which is something they haven’t had since 1988. They were extremely cautious when it came to trading their prospects just a couple years ago, but now they’re trying to add to a team that’s somehow powered by minor-league free agents and lesser trades and signings.

Oh, and Clayton Kershaw. Minor-league free agents, lesser trades and signings, and Clayton Kershaw. They might have the best team in the NL, still, so it makes sense to add a hitter with Hall of Fame talent in the middle of his best season, even if he’s just a rental. If Dozier has a Dozierific second half, this could be the best lineup in baseball. The Dodgers gave up a lot of prospects, but they had a lot to offer.

When it comes to the Machado trade, it doesn’t hurt that this is a preview of what it would be like to play for the Dodgers long term, either. The weather’s pretty nice, Manny.

Yankees

Acquired: Lance Lynn, J.A. Happ, Zach Britton, Luke Volt, $2.75 million in international bonus money

Traded: Tyler Austin, Luis Rijo, Brandon Drury, Billy McKinney, Cody Carroll, Josh Rogers, Dillon Tate, Chasen Shreve, Giovanny Gallegos, Adam Warren

I’m not a huge fan of Lance Lynn, even as he’s been solid for the last two months, but he’s overqualified for what the Yankees are asking him to do, which is sit in a glass case and be ready. The Yankees have a starter with a wonky elbow in Masahiro Tanaka, one with a case of the mystery sucks in Sonny Gray, and a 38-year-old in CC Sabathia. They aren’t crossing their fingers; they’re preparing for the apocalypse. Good for them.

Happ seems like the kind of starter who can give five solid innings in the postseason before giving way to a four-headed monster of bullpen doom, and look at that, Zach Britton is here to be another head. I don’t know what happened to Tommy Kahnle either, and there are no guarantees that Britton will be back to 2014-2016 levels, or anything close to it, but the Yankees have the kind of depth that wins championships.

It’s about time. They’ve had to wait nine years and endure two 84-win seasons, but now they’ve built their best shot at another title run.

Royals

Acquired: Brett Phillips, Jorge Lopez, Blake Perkins, Kelvin Gutierrez, Yohanse Morel

Traded: Mike Moustakas, Kelvin Herrera

A fair return for two beloved players, with deft timing executed on both. The Royals swooped back into the market to sign Moustakas, which might have cost them a compensatory draft pick. Unless it just meant that he wasn’t going to have to sit out until June, which would have been incredibly annoying and sad.

Phillips is the main snag, and there’s a strong chance that he’ll whiff his way out of starting consideration soon. Still, the tools are real, and they got him for a rental. Even if that rental will have pictures of him hanging around the ballpark for the next half-century.

Orioles

Acquired: Yusniel Diaz, Dean Kremer, Zach Pop, Rylan Bannon, Breyvic Valera, Cody Carroll, Josh Rogers, Dillon Tate, international bonus space, Evan Phillips, Jean Carlos Encarnación, Brett Cumberland, Bruce Zimmerman, Jonathan Villar, Luis Ortiz, Jean Carlos Carmona

Traded: Manny Machado, Brad Brach, Zach Britton, Darren O’Day, Jonathan Schoop

It would have been more if they opened up shop in the offseason, or even better if they did this two years ago. Ah, the benefit of hindsight.

All told, though, it’s almost like having a full draft to yourself, right down to the first-round promise of Diaz. That’s a pretty sweet haul for players who weren’t going to be around for the next good Orioles team, even if it’s ultra-depressing that Machado won’t be on that team.

The part where the Orioles acquired international bonus money for Brach and Schoop made me laugh, though. They usually hold an International Bonus Money Day at the park, where they give international cap space to the first 20,000 fans, and now they’re acquiring it on purpose? I know there’s a good reason for it, but still. It’s ... almost like the organizational direction isn’t clearly defined.

Still, think of it like a free draft. Hey, free draft! If you’re going to trade away your middle infield, your bullpen, and the most reliable starter in a sea of unreliable misery, at least get 15 players so you can pretend you’re getting a free draft out of it.

Twins

Acquired: Luke Raley, Devin Smeltzer, Tyler Austin, Luis Rijo, Chase De Jong, Ryan Costello, Gilberto Celestino, Jorge Alcala, Jhoan Durán, Gabriel Maciel, Ernie De La Trinidad

Traded: Brian Dozier, Lance Lynn, Zach Duke, Ryan Pressly, Eduardo Escobar

Give me a list of the prospects the Twins were offered for Dozier two seasons ago, and I’ll tell you if they were winners or losers. As is, that’s a list of names that’s 11 players long, and there’s a fine chance that at least one or two of them will make a dumb “winners-losers” binary choice look silly in four years.

Dozier was traded too late, and the return wasn’t impressive. That’s how it goes.

Duke was traded at the perfect time, and any value he adds through trade is impressive.

Pressly is solid, even if his K-rate suggests he should be more than that. Dealing him as he’s getting deeper in his arbitration years is a good move, and while I’m not qualified to analyze the return too deeply, it sure looks like they got highly regarded prospects back, which is excellent value.

Escobar was an extreme sell-high player, and to the Twins’ credit, they sold high.

I’m leaning toward “WINNERS, ABSOLUTE WINNERS,” but as of now, I’ll turn the caps lock off. Looks good from here, and give them credit for deciding to sell so quickly after a surprise postseason run.

I just want to know what they could have got for Dozier two seasons ago.

Losers

Indians

Acquired: Leonys Martin, Brad Hand, Adam Cimber, James Hoyt

Traded: Francisco Mejia, Willi Castro, Kyle Dowdy, Tommy DeJuneas

They’re not on the loser’s list because these trades won’t help them. These trades might send them to the World danged Series. The Indians’ bullpen was a mess, and they got two low-cost relievers with loads of team control. That’s a net positive.

It cost them one of their best prospects, though, and it came after an offseason where the Indians let several relievers go and replaced them with wishes and hopes and dreams. That’s not to say that Bryan Shaw and Boone Logan have been good, because they haven’t. But their plan was something like, “Neil Ramirez and Matt Belisle and uh we’ll get back to you,” and it cost them Mejia.

If it helps them even reach the World Series, it’s a successful trade. But it sure seems like one that could have been at least partially avoided with just a modicum of urgency this offseason.

It was a reasonable trade deadline strategy, sure, but it was also a strange offseason for a team that’s so close.

Diamondbacks

Acquired: Eduardo Escobar, Matt Andriese, Brad Ziegler, Jake Diekman

Traded: RHP Jhoan Duran, OF Gabriel Maciel, OF Ernie De La Trinidad, Brian Shaffer, Michael Perez, Tommy Eveld, Wei-Chieh Huang

It’s a lot of talent for underwhelming players. Eduardo Escobar might have figured out how to be more than a super-sub at the age of 29, but the seven years of an 89 OPS+ that came before it leave me skeptical. Andriese is the best example of Just A Guy in baseball right now, right down to the 4.36 ERA, and Ziegler is an old friend suffering through an erratic season.

Most of these players are trending in the right direction, but as a deadline strategy? I want something bolder if I’m a Diamondbacks fan. These are the kinds of moves I would expect from a team like the Red Sox or Astros, teams with recent success that are running away with their respective divisions.

A team like the Diamondbacks, scrapping with three teams and without a championship since Juan Soto was an infant, should seek out trades with just a teensy bit more oomph. These players should help, so I’m probably being overly nitpicky, but with a team like this, I want EXPLOSIONS.

Rockies

Acquired: Seunghwan Oh

Traded: Forest Wall, Chad Spanberger, player to be named later

The team that spent the offseason building the Super Bullpen of Great Fortune had to go get a reliever because their plan failed. Not only did they have to get a reliever, but they got one they could have had for a pittance throughout the entire offseason.

If this isn’t a textbook lesson in bullpen construction, I don’t know what is. There are lot of ways to build a bullpen, but I’m pretty sure that throwing money at it is the absolute worst one.

Pirates

Acquired: Not Gerrit Cole

Traded: Gerrit Cole

But, yeah, go get that late-inning reliever for this year and the next. That’ll shore things up.

NEVER MIND.

Acquired: Chris Archer, Keone Kela

Traded: Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows, Taylor Hearn, players to be named later

This is the year they’re taking risks. This is the year they trade huge pieces of a potential future. This is the deadline where they vault ahead of their competition. The one where they’re seven freaking games back in the NL Central. The one after they traded Gerrit Cole for magic beans.

Let’s check in with the deadline action in 2014, when they actually made the postseason.

July 31, 2014

Selected Angel Sanchez off waivers from the Chicago White Sox.

What about 2013, when they won 94 games?

July 31, 2013

Traded player to be named to the Seattle Mariners. Received Robert Andino.

They did get J.A. Happ in 2015, and that was more inspired than anyone gave them credit for at the time. But this is the year to go bananas?

To be fair, though, if you’re going to go after a pitcher, one who has an owner-friendly contract is the way to go. Archer will be around for the next three years if the Pirates want him, so I don’t begrudge the Pirates for thinking he fits some sort of window for them. And if you’re making me bet on the cumulative WAR for Archer over the next three years and the cumulative WAR for Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow, I will probably choose Archer. If Meadows had boffo power or plate discipline, I’d be giddy about him, but he’s just shy on both fronts, and Glasnow has been erratic.

Still, it’s the timing that gets me, even if the trade might work out.

YOU’RE TAKING RISKS NOW?

NOW?

Astros

Acquired: Ryan Pressly, Roberto Osuna, Tommy DeJuneas, Martin Maldonado

Traded: Ken Giles, David Paulino, Gilberto Celestino, Jorge Alcala, Hector Perez, Patrick Sandoval, James Hoyt, their self-respect

Their bullpen is more talented now. Congratulations, Astros. Osuna can really wing it.

When I talked to people who worked for the Astros last year, I asked what about the team is it that they would want to read about. My answer was that the clubhouse was a diverse wonderland of ebullient personalities, one of the most cohesive teams ever assembled. So I wrote about it. They won the World Series. I was raised not to go overboard on the clubhouse stuff, but last year’s team sure got me wondering ...

Then they acquired a pitcher serving the second-longest suspension for domestic violence under the new rules. The ace pitcher clearly isn’t enthused, even as he tries to be a good employee. The Yankees acquired a reliever in the middle of a domestic violence suspension, and then they traded him for one of the best prospects in the game before giving themselves a better chance to win the World Series. So if you want to be cynical, you can look at this purely in baseball terms.

There were other relievers, but the Astros settled on Osuna because he was a buy-low guy. That’s extremely cynical.

Gross. And very much against the spirit of what got them their first championship. We’ll see how receptive the clubhouse is to a player who still has a court case pending because he allegedly did some repugnant shit.

Brewers

Acquired: Jonathan Schoop, Mike Moustakas, Joakim Soria

Traded: Jonathan Villar, Luis Ortiz, Jean Carlos Carmona, Brett Phillips, Jorge Lopez, Kodi Medeiros, Wilber Perez

I don’t hate these trades in isolation. I hate them only because the Brewers now have an overstuffed infield, but they’re still counting on Wade Miley to shore up the rotation. Maybe he’ll have a 2.01 ERA forever.

RON HOWARD: Get the fuck out of here.

Yeah, I’m not a believer in Miley, and neither is the narrator. The Brewers adding to their already formidable bullpen depth was smart. Getting one more infielder was necessary. Getting two, but not a starting pitcher?

Dunno. Not what I would have done. We’ll see if the post-deadline waiver madness helps them in this regard, but I would have loved to see them with Archer instead of the Pirates.

A’s

Acquired: Jeurys Familia

Traded: Will Toffey, Bobby Wahl

The A’s are good, dang it. I wanted more. I wanted a sign to the clubhouse that the A’s are capital-G, capital-F, and Capital-I Going For It. I wanted a starting pitcher kicking down the door and screaming, “COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE ... IN A WORLD WHERE I PITCH SIX OR SEVEN STRONG INNINGS REGULARLY.”

Instead the A’s got a reliever. A good one! At a reasonable price! But I was looking for something more when it comes to the rotation, not to mention some help for poor, lost Jonathan Lucroy behind the plate.

The A’s probably aren’t in a spot to go all-in on this year’s surprising (TO SOME) contender, and I get that. But something a little bit more than a setup man would have been nice. This fun, scrappy team deserved it.

Giants

Acquired: Nope

Traded: Nah

Will Smith is absolutely dominant right now. Of all the relievers who were traded, Smith would have been the best one. Teams are clamoring for someone just like him — a lefty who can dominate hitters from either side of the plate and is under team control for next year, too. He would have brought back a hefty return.

The Giants are holding on to him, and they’ll use him to finish .500 this year, with some crossed fingers for next year.

That’s what the Giants had to trade, though. They had relievers, with Smith, Tony Watson, and Sam Dyson all having strong years. This isn’t like their mess from the offseason, where they couldn’t even hold a fire sale if they wanted to. All they had to do is trade relievers.

It’s been extremely nice to watch a team with a competent bullpen, so I get it. But the Giants are climbing out of the bottom of the organizational rankings, and one of the golden rules of building a farm system is that when you have a chance to flip relievers for prospects, you do it.

The Giants declined. They’re five games out of the second wild card, so maybe I’m the dummy. I have a feeling, though, that it would have been an exciting return for Will Smith.

OK, sure, whateverers

Red Sox

Acquired: Ian Kinsler, Nathan Eovaldi

Traded: Williams Jerez, Ty Buttrey, Jalen Beeks

OK. Sure. Whatever. That seems nice. Kinsler has a glove, and the bat won’t kill you. Eovaldi is still working his way back from Tommy John, and he’s always had great stuff. The Red Sox are a million games over .500 are are making the postseason regardless.

OK. Sure. These are reasonable, if boring, moves.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit.

Braves

Acquired: Adam Duvall, Kevin Gausman, Jonny Venters

Traded: Lucas Sims, Matt Wisler, Preston Tucker, international bonus money

Duvall still has some believers, especially if you believe in the batted-ball stats. Gausman has a solid arm that’s always been behind his results. Maybe he’ll be better served with a different coaching staff and a ballpark that isn’t unfair to fly balls.

OK. Sure. These are reasonable, if boring, moves.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit.

White Sox

Acquired: Kodi Medeiros, Wilber Perez

Traded: Joakim Soria

Always take fliers on relievers when you’re a rebuilding team. Always, always, always. Pay the extra millions. Insert yourself into the offseason deals. Then turn around and wish for a happy trade-deadline raffle ticket to pay off.

Still, these are reasonable, if boring, moves.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit.

Phillies

Acquired: Asdrubal Cabrera, Wilson Ramos, Aaron Loup

Traded: Franklyn Kilome, Jacob Waguespack, PsTBNL

No Machado. No Archer. No flashy win-now pieces, no flashy win-later pieces. Just a couple of guys who could have been solid deadline moves nearly a decade ago, too.

OK. Sure. These are reasonable, if boring, moves.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit.

It’s hard to judge the Ramos trade without knowing the prospects going back to the Rays, but it seems like a light price. I have no idea how the A’s, Red Sox, or even Nationals couldn’t meet it.

Cubs

Acquired: Cole Hamels, Brandon Kintzler, Jesse Chavez

Traded: Jhon Romero, Ricky Tyler Thomas, Eddie Butler, Rollie Lacy, PTBNL

Hamels got his swing-and-miss back, and there are reasons to believe that he’s still a more valuable contributor than his Texas stats suggest. They added depth in the bullpen, and you wouldn’t be wrong to think that Yu Darvish coming back is like the real deadline addition.

They’re rich. They’re young. They’re good. Sure, add the pricey veteran. Take him for a spin.

These are reasonable, if boring, moves.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit.

Reds

Acquired: Lucas Sims, Matt Wisler, Preston Tucker

Traded: Adam Duvall

I’m stuck in 2014, so this seems like a fantastic package of prospects to me. Mostly, though, I like how they took a chance by trading on a cheap, under-control player who was not hitting, which limited the return. The Reds have outfielders coming out of their ears; it was a risk they could afford to take, even if it was a little bit of a buy-low trade.

The Reds have made an interesting roster out of hardly noticed trades (just look up who they got in return for Alfredo freaking Simon), and this could be a fine addition to the legacy.

This is a reasonable, if boring, move.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit. Except for the Reds, who definitely aren’t winners these days, ha ha, just a little joke as I near the end of this hellpost.

Nationals

Acquired: Jhon Romero

Traded: Brandon Kintzler

There were whispers about Bryce Harper getting traded, but in the end, the Nationals traded nothing but a complementary bullpen piece, and they acquired several future moments of autocorrect-inspired confusion.

Good. They probably should have dealt Gio Gonzalez and possibly a couple of other short-timers, but at least they made a rational move, while keeping intact their desire to build a young outfield of the gods.

This is a reasonable, if boring, move.

Not everybody is a winner or loser, dammit.

Except for the Nationals if they reach the NLDS. Maybe they still will. They certainly have the talent. But of all the stand-patters, the Nats were the stand-pattiest. It just made sense for them to double down on the idea that they weren’t wrong, but baseball was. They’ll regroup next year if needed.

Not only do they think they’re still in it this year, but they think the same thing about next year.

The Giants didn’t have a choice this last offseason. Aside from Madison Bumgarner, they didn’t have veterans who could be traded for top prospects. They had a handful of fine players who were being paid market value, like Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford, but they didn’t have any young, underpaid contributors, which meant it wasn’t feasible to hold a fire sale. This is how an old, declining team could add old, declining players and somehow make sense.

This July, the Giants had a choice. They decided not to sell. Now we get to scrutinize them all over again and ask what in the heck they’re doing.

The problem with the idea of a fire sale is that the Giants aren’t a normal team, and not just with the fairly compensated roster. They’re a brand and a destination. The worst attendance for the Giants in the AT&T Park era was 2.8 million. Before this last July ended, the Giants had already drawn more paying fans to their home games than all but one team that played at Candlestick. They draw.

But the crowds were definitely smaller last year, and the weeknight games against uninspiring opponents are sparsely attended this season. Another season threatening 100 losses would be box office doom. The people on Twitter screaming, “GET YOUNGER” are a very vocal minority. The majority is filled with people who give Hunter Pence standing ovations when he jogs out to right field for a rare visit to his old home.

The Giants’ choice this time around was a little different. Will Smith is looking like he stole Andrew Miller’s glowing amulet, and he could have been the best reliever traded at the deadline. Tony Watson is on a ridiculously below-market contract for another year at bargain rates, and he’s having one of his best seasons. Sam Dyson exorcised his 2017 demons and is back to being the pitcher he was with the Rangers.

All the Giants needed to do was trade these fine relievers for all of the prospects, rebuild the bullpen in the offseason, and explain to the fans that five games back is a much bigger hurdle than you might think.

Good luck with that. To most people, five games back is synonymous with “Ah, yes, a five-game winning streak away from the top of the division.” If the fans wouldn’t understand a fire sale in the offseason, they’re sure not going to understand the decision to give up on a team that still has a chance.

Well, see, the Giants’ Pythagorean record is actually not encouraging, and ...

Shut up, nerd. Five games back.

The fans weren’t the only consideration for the deadline, though. The Giants are holding on to their controllable bullpen because ... they actually expect to contend next year, too.

This is a big paradigm shift. My guess is that the Giants were trying to build a .500 team this year because .500 teams are watchable, if frustrating. And look at that, the Giants have built a .500 team that might be the most watchable-if-frustrating team in baseball. They knew that being abjectly terrible again would be murder for their brand, so they at least wanted to be watchable, and there was a fair chance that they would contend at the same time. Mission accomplished.

But how they got there is another story. Aside from the usual suspects, three of the top 11 rookie pitchers by Baseball-Reference’s WAR are on the Giants (Dereck Rodriguez, Reyes Moronta, and Andrew Suarez), and they’re getting contributions from youngsters like Alen Hanson, Austin Slater, and Steven Duggar. They look like a roster that might be able to reload sensibly in the offseason, when they’re free of luxury-tax restrictions.

It’s a wild development for a team that entered the season with this plan:

• Have Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija pitch well
• Get Evan Longoria to rake for at least one more year
• Acquire Andrew McCutchen to be a middle-of-the-order dynamo
• Assume Mark Melancon will come back at full strength

None of that happened, yet the Giants are still over .500 and contending. That’s a testament to the infield, which is filled with known quantities, but it’s also a testament to the found money of this season. They’ll have Dereck Rodriguez and Andrew Suarez and hopefully a young outfielder or two next year, which will allow them to spend.

TL;DR: The Giants looked at this year’s roster and figured the reasons they’re competing this year will still be a reason they can compete next year. They’ll have more money to spend, and they won’t be counting entirely on aging pitchers like they were before this season.

So I get the decision to stand pat.

I strongly disagree with it — it’s been a treat to watch Smith and Watson this year, but take what’s in the box — but that is what the Giants are thinking. They might use these players to contend next year, and in the meantime, the consolation prize is that they still get to contend this year, too.

The Giants’ farm is in a better way than it was two years ago, but it still could have used an infusion of talent at this deadline. Trading three relievers in a reliever-giddy market would have been the perfect way to make up for the inability to rebuild like a normal team. They could have reset their plans and attacked next season with the same plan and more prospects. The only additional concern would have been the need to find a new bullpen.

It would have been worth the risk. Instead, the Giants would like to announce that they’re not just building a team centered around a last gasp. They’re going to try again this offseason and the next, and while they’re trying, they’ll keep their best cheap relievers.

It’s not the only strategy that’s available to them. They actually came to a fork in the road this time. Last year they were pushed down a cliff, but this time they had a choice. They’re choosing to keep at it.

I would have taken what’s in the box and reloaded for next year, but we’ll just have to agree to disagree. The Giants entered this season as a team looking to capitalize on one last gasp. Now they’re thinking of themselves as a team that’s at least partially sustainable, which means they want to hold onto their best players.

Even if you disagree with the strategy, it’s hard not to be impressed with the shift. The Giants were counting on three starting pitchers, and two of them broke, which should have created an unbelievable mess. Instead the Giants are still hopeful, even if they probably shouldn’t be.