When the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers matched up on the stunning trade that sent more than a quarter-billion dollars worth of contract commitments west last year, reactions in the baseball world to what the Dodgers had done tended to take on a certain tone. “Risky” was on the nicer end of that scale, while more often than not words like “gluttonous,” “laughable,” or simply “insane” were tossed around as the game struggled to comprehend the scale of what had happened.

For the Dodgers, it was an opportunity to jump-start a tattered organization that hasn’t been to the World Series since 1988 and had suffered through years of neglect due to the personal problems of former owner Frank McCourt.

In Boston, it was seen as a chance to make a fresh start as the Red Sox continued on the path to 93 losses, their worst season since 1966.

One year later, as the Red Sox come to Dodger Stadium for a highly-anticipated series this weekend, both clubs are in first place and looking towards October. It may have been a shocking deal when it happened, but it’s turned out to be a win/win that neither side would undo if they had the chance — and it’s a big part of the success both teams have had.

Here’s why.

As ESPN’s Buster Olney reported at the time, the response he heard from those in front offices of other clubs was that it was a “terrible value” and a “huge overpay” for the Dodgers. After all, in order to acquire Adrian Gonzalez — one of the central figures of the clubhouse revolt against Boston manager Bobby Valentine — they also had to agree to take on the more than $130 million still due declining pitcher Josh Beckett and injured, unproductive outfielder Carl Crawford. That they still had to send five players to Boston (including highly regarded pitching prospects Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster) to seal the deal seemed to be an unnecessary hardship.

When the Dodgers pulled the trigger on the trade, their goal was clear. They badly wanted Gonzalez, the first baseman who had followed up a smashing 2011 Boston debut (.407 wOBA) with a below-average (for him) .348 mark through mid-August of 2012. With the continually disappointing James Loney as the incumbent at first base and few upgrades at the position available either in the organization or on the upcoming free agent market, the opportunity to add a Southern California native who remains popular with the area’s huge Hispanic base was too tempting to pass up.

Acquiring Gonzalez was the primary focus, but it was Crawford who represented the largest risk. The former Tampa Bay star had hit just .260/.292/.419 in two seasons with Red Sox, proving that the marriage was a mismatch both on the field and off. He’d also undergone Tommy John surgery on his elbow just days before the trade, so his status to even start the season for the Dodgers was uncertain.

Crawford was not only ready for Opening Day, he hit .308/.388/.516 in April, filling the leadoff hole and pairing with Gonzalez to be basically the only two Dodgers to hit at all during the early part of the season, especially with Ramirez hurt and Kemp struggling. As the team struggled to stay afloat, it was their two Boston imports that were leading the offense. He’s missed a chunk of time since then due to a hamstring injury and has shown uneven results since then until an August rebound, but he’s proven that he can still contribute on both sides of the ball in a situation where he’s happy and healthy.

Beckett made just eight mediocre starts before being lost for the season, though the team has survived just fine without him; Crawford, Gonzalez, and fellow trade acquisition Nick Punto have combined for a full-season pace of approximately eight wins above replacement. If that’s perhaps not quite the impact that Puig and Ramirez have provided, it does make for a far deeper lineup than the one that finished eight games out of first last year.

While most of the focus was in Los Angeles, the Red Sox took a risk in this as well. Yes, clearing themselves of so much payroll and clubhouse trouble represented an unexpected chance they couldn’t pass up. But Boston is a difficult town to commit to a rebuilding process in, and removing Gonzalez created a hole both at first base and in the heart of the lineup. Coming off the disaster that was 2012, few observers picked the Red Sox to make it out of the tough American League East, much less compete for the best record in the league.

It should be noted that not only did the Sox “acquire” significant financial flexibility with all the money they cleared from the books in the deal, they haven’t lost it. The deals they signed this offseason could never be considered frightening, or of the long-term variety.

As the teams prepare to face on the field this weekend, there still a good case to be made that the Dodgers overpaid to get Gonzalez. That’s true not so much for the money (which they seem to have endless reserves of), but because they assumed most of the risk and still had to kick in a few very good prospects. Still, they managed to hang onto their best prospects like Zach Lee and Joc Pederson, and none of the big contracts they received extend past age 36.

The Dodgers wouldn’t be in this position without Gonzalez, and the Red Sox wouldn’t be here with him. It’s hard to think of a better outcome for both sides than that.

Across the sport, the majors are in the midst of a renaissance of incredible young starting pitching. To merely name Clayton Kershaw, Jose Fernandez, Matt Harvey and Stephen Strasburg as elite under-26 talents is to neglect the work of Madison Bumgarner, Shelby Miller, Matt Moore, Chris Sale and so many outstanding others.

But those are the big names, the ones who win awards and headline highlight packages. Everyone knows them. While the attention is mostly given to those top-line pitchers, there’s an impressive crop of young arms behind them who may not be future aces in the sense that Fernandez and Harvey might be, yet are still making names for themselves at the beginning of what could be very productive careers. Let’s shine a spotlight on four under-the-radar pitchers who are excelling this season.

Jenrry Mejia, New York Mets
While all of the pitching press in Flushing these days goes to Harvey and Zack Wheeler, the Mets do have a pitcher younger than Harvey who was in the big leagues before he or Wheeler were even in the organization. Mejia was rushed to the show as a reliever in 2010 at just 20 years old by the previous administration, perhaps trying to generate some excitement while fearing (correctly) that their tenure was ending. Mejia had been a starter in the minors and a nicely regarded prospect, but struggled with his command out of the bullpen that season while throwing nearly 80 percent fastballs — which did little for the development of his secondary pitches. He then blew out his elbow early the next season and missed most of 2011 and 2012 recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Once again healthy, Mejia — still just 23 — has returned to the Mets and has been very impressive in doing so. He shut out the Nationals in Washington over seven innings in his season debut in July and in his first four starts he’s managed a 22/3 K/BB mark in 24.1 innings. He’s also brought with him a brand-new slider, one that he’s thrown about a quarter of the time this season. That’s allowed him to use his naturally cutting fastball less often and keep hitters off guard. While there’s still a chance that a somewhat undersized righty with an injury history ends up in the bullpen, the thought of Mejia joining with Harvey and Wheeler to form a young powerful rotation trio for years to come has to give Mets fans some hope.

Tony Cingrani, Cincinnati Reds
A third-round pick in 2011, the 24-year-old Rice product has done nothing but pile up absurd strikeout numbers during his professional career. In 228 minor league innings over parts of the last three seasons, he whiffed 301, then made his big league debut last September just over a year after being drafted.

Cingrani relies almost exclusively on his fastball, leading many to believe that his future is in the bullpen, but 14 of his 19 appearances for Cincinnati this season have been starts, and he’s looked excellent in them. In seven starts since a brief trip to the bullpen in June, Cingrani has allowed just a .164/.265/.250 line while striking out 45 in 40 innings. A particular highlight came on July 28, when he struck out 11 otherwise unstoppable Dodgers over seven shutout one-hit innings.

Despite the reliance on his main pitch — the fastball that succeeds in part because of his deceptive delivery — Cingrani has shown no problem with missing bats so far. His swinging strike percentage of 9.6 percent not only ranks him in the top 40 of all starters, but it puts him slightly ahead of young stars like Fernandez and Miller. Still, he’ll need to increase his offerings if he plans to stay in the rotation long term, and he’s begun to do that by introducing a new sweeping curveball this season. While it’s more of a “show-me” pitch at this point designed more to keep batters thinking than anything else, he’s also yet to allow a hit off it on any of the 68 times he’s thrown it.

Nate Eovaldi, Miami Marlins
Acquired from Los Angeles in the deal that sent Hanley Ramirez to the Dodgers last year, the 23-year-old Eovaldi is perhaps best known for being a product of the same Texas high school that Nolan Ryan attended. That’s beginning to change, however. Eovaldi is now hitting triple digits on the radar gun and showing flashes of the talent that made him so appealing to the Marlins when they were shopping Ramirez.

Eovaldi’s career numbers may look underwhelming, but it’s important to remember that he was just 21 when the Dodgers skipped him past Triple-A to help reinforce a tattered rotation in 2011. He flashed potential in 16 starts with Los Angeles over 2011-12 before being traded, though he generally struggled with his control. Still, a FIP of 4.18 through 154 innings over his first two seasons put him at only slightly below league average, which was 4.01 last season. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being an average major leaguer before your 23rd birthday.

A bout with shoulder soreness delayed his 2013 debut until June. But in the 10 starts since, he’s allowed more than three runs just once. While his 3.83 FIP doesn’t quite back up his 2.82 ERA, it does continue his trend of improvement each year. As with many young pitchers, Eovaldi needs to improve his secondary pitches, though his slider is showing promise. Eovaldi’s ceiling is short of an “ace,” but with fellow young pitching talents like Fernandez and Jacob Turner in the Miami rotation, it doesn’t need to be.

Chris Archer, Tampa Bay Rays
This could have just as easily been 25-year-old Alex Cobb or 24-year-old Alex Colome, because the Rays are just overflowing with young pitching. (Even Moore, in the Cy Young conversation until he was sidelined by a sore elbow, only just turned 24.) The twice-traded Archer is the proud owner of one of the most impressive outings from any pitcher this season: a two-hit, 1-0 shutout of the Yankees in New York in late July.

Armed with a solid fastball and an excellent slider, Archer still needs to master his consistency, since he’s allowed four or more earned runs three times in 14 starts and left early with an injury in another. Still, he’s also capable of doing things like allowing only three earned runs in five July starts. He is part of the young core that makes the possibility of trading David Price a palatable option.

For years, proponents of advanced statistics have been trying to push forth the idea of bullpen volatility, arguing that unless you have a truly elite reliever in his prime — think Mariano Rivera — it almost never makes sense to spend huge dollars on a ninth-inning option. Closers, the argument goes, are made, not born, and often all that separates the All-Star in the ninth inning from the relatively nameless seventh-inning setup man is the simple opportunity to collect saves.

For many of those same years, plenty of baseball’s front offices have been doing their best to prove that argument invalid, spending tens of millions on “proven closers” and getting burned in the process. Just recently, you can look to Heath Bell’s single disappointing year in Miami, orBrandon League losing his job in Los Angeles by June, or especially the $51 million Philadelphia gave to Jonathan Papelbon prior to 2012. As the Phillies collapse due to increasing holes in their aging roster that might have been filled by that money, their return on that investment is merely declining velocity and complaints that Papelbon “didn’t come here for this.”

In a sport that is often notorious for its reluctance to accept change — note how many still want to award the Cy Young based on “wins” — it appears the myth of the high-priced closer as a requirement for success is finally dead, or at least close to it. If the playoffs started Thursday, not a single one of the six division winners would be using a closer they paid top dollar to on the open market.

Championship trend

That’s a trend that may have gained popularity over the past two Octobers, since both of the two most recent World Series winners took home the title with inexpensive internal options who were forced into the role during the season. In 2011, Jason Motte took over for the Cardinals after Fernando Salas and others faltered earlier in the year; in 2012, it was Sergio Romo on the mound as the Giants won after Brian Wilson blew out his elbow. Motte and Romo had each come up as relatively unheralded prospects through their organizations, and each had a mere three saves entering those seasons.

Instead, this year’s contenders have found their ninth-inning options in nearly every other way except for large free-agent spending. For example, Boston thought it’d collected more than enough options for the back end of its bullpen after trading for Andrew Bailey from Oakland last year and Joel Hanrahan from Pittsburgh this year. Unfortunately, that duo combined for just 35 2/3 innings this year before each went down with season-ending arm injuries. In their absence, the mantle of “closer” now falls to 38-year-old Koji Uehara, signed for a simple one-year deal over the winter — and all Uehara has done is prove to be one of the most reliable relievers around.

When the Red Sox acquired Hanrahan, part of the return to Pittsburgh was righty reliever Mark Melancon, who was joining his fourth organization in four years and had spent most of 2012 in the minors after putting up a 6.20 ERA for Boston. As the Pirates make their shocking run to the playoffs, they owe a great deal of thanks to Melancon, who has turned his career around partially due to increased usage of his effective cut fastball. He was a first-time All-Star this season setting up fellow reclamation projectJason Grilli, and has recently taken over the closer job himself as Grilli has missed time due to injury.

Grooming them on the cheap

In Atlanta and Los Angeles, the Braves and Dodgers are both using closers they developed, though in very different ways. Craig Kimbrel was a third-round selection by the Braves in 2010 who managed to harness his control problems in the minors, and was a star nearly from the moment he made his debut in the big leagues. Kenley Jansen, meanwhile, spent years in the Dodgers’ system proving that he was never going to hit enough to make it as a catcher before being converted to the mound. Once he did, the Dodgers attempted to block him with both Javy Guerra and League before acknowledging that the League signing was a mistake this year. Since 2011, Jansen and Kimbrel are two of just three relievers with a strikeout rate north of 14 per nine innings.

Like Boston, Detroit and Oakland are using free-agent closers, but no one that they signed with the idea of closing at the time. The Tigers have struggled all year to find a reliable ninth-inning option after rookie Bruce Rondon and veteran Jose Valverde were each unable to answer the bell, and they’ve instead turned to 36-year-old Joaquin Benoit, signed to a much-maligned three-year deal after 2011. Acting as a full-time closer for the first time in a career that dates back to 2001, Benoit has been outstanding for the Tigers as they’ve surged ahead of Cleveland in the American League Central.

It’s a similar situation in Oakland, where Grant Balfour signed with the Athletics for a mere $8.1 million guaranteed over two years following 2010, plus a 2013 option that the club exercised. Balfour spent his first year in the Bay Area setting up for Bailey and Brian Fuentes, then briefly won the job over Fuentes in early 2012 before getting demoted. After spending most of the summer setting up for Fuentes and then Ryan Cook, Balfour won the job back in August, and parlayed his success into his first All-Star appearance this year at age 35.

All told, the six closers for the division leaders are making a total of just less than $16 million combined this year, which is only slightly more than the $13 million Papelbon is making by himself. None of them have guaranteed contracts past this season, though some will remain under team control. While we’ve focused here on the likely playoff teams, it’s a trend that is being seen throughout baseball; of the 15 pitchers with at least 25 saves through Wednesday, only three — Joe Nathan, the legendary Rivera and Rafael Soriano — are signed to non-arbitration contracts of $5 million or more.

As Buster Olney wrote in July, just three teams still have the same closers they did just two years ago, only because closers rarely have a long shelf life. Time and again, closers have proven to not be worth huge investments of years or money, and we’re seeing teams around the sport finding success in staffing the back of their bullpen in other, more efficient ways.

If you’re shocked by the idea of actually having something positive to say about the laughingstock Miami Marlins, you’d be far from alone. They have arguably the most despised owner in sports in Jeffrey Loria, a man who successfully talked Florida taxpayers into publicly funding a gaudy stadium that no one goes to. They underwent yet another fire sale last winter, less than a year after opening the new park. They just bid farewell to Loria’s hand-picked hitting coach Tino Martinez after allegations of verbal and physical abuse, all while the offense Martinez led challenges historical marks for futility.

Stripped of most of their veterans after the blockbuster trade with Toronto last winter that earned them near-universal grief, the Marlins lost 41 of their first 54 games, the worst season-opening stretch for any team since 1987. You probably haven’t given them much of a thought at all since then, and it’s understandable why that might be the case.

But that means that just about no one seems to have noticed that the Marlins have the fourth-best record in the National League (29-24) since May 31, two bona fide superstars under the age of 24 and a roster that is turning over the placeholders to include young and talented prospects.

It’s not easy to be a Marlins fan right now — but as you could see watching Jose Fernandezstrike out 14 batters on Friday night — they are shaping up as a juggernaut in the not-too-distant future.

When the team moved into its brand-new park last season, they did so with an excess of pomp and circumstance by signing Heath Bell, Mark Buehrle and Jose Reyes to expensive free-agent deals. But as the team stumbled on the field, the selloff soon began, and after pitcher Ricky Nolasco was sent to the Dodgers last month, it left the team without a single player making more than $2.75 million in 2013.

With the roster gutted of talent other than elite slugger Giancarlo Stanton, new managerMike Redmond was forced to staff his lineup with past-their-prime veteran fill-ins like Greg Dobbs (.262 wOBA) and Juan Pierre (.261 wOBA). It didn’t help that Stanton was sidelined for much of the first half by a bad hamstring, and the team’s start was so atrocious that it fulfilled every critic’s claim that Loria cared only about revenue sharing and tax breaks, not spending on a winning roster.

But what was often lost in that accounting is this simple fact: the 2012 team was awful. It lost 93 games, cost around $93 million dollars and was a year older. While it was difficult to avoid piling on for the horrible optics of blowing the team up so quickly after moving into the new park, if there was a mistake made here, it wasn’t the Toronto trade. It was the players they had spent money on in the first place.

While Hanley Ramirez has become a star again after being traded to the Dodgers in the first fire-sale deal last summer, most of the players sent to Toronto have failed to contribute any more than they did in Miami, leaving the Blue Jays mired in last place themselves.

Meanwhile, the Marlins have reloaded by working with the talent imported in those deals to fill in around their two young superstars, Stanton and rookie pitcher Jose Fernandez. Stanton’s ongoing injury problems remain a concern, yet he remains one of the most fearsome sluggers in the game. Fernandez, the team’s first-round pick in 2011, just turned 21 on Wednesday, yet is one of the very few starters in baseball with a FIP below 3.00.

As the roster turns over, the team Redmond rolls out today looks very different than the one he had earlier. For example, in two different April games, he was forced to start Pierre,Justin Ruggiano (.285 wOBA) and Austin Kearns (.232 wOBA in 31 plate appearances) as his outfielders, a trio that is a combined 99 years old and well past their primes.

By May, 22-year-old Marcell Ozuna was seeing considerable time in the outfield, and for each of the last nine games, the starters have been Christian Yelich (21, Keith Law’s No. 6 overall preseason prospect), Jake Marisnick (22, Law’s No. 82 prospect, acquired from Toronto) and a now-healthy Stanton, still only 23.

The youth movement can be found nearly everywhere. When the Marlins hosted the Mets on Tuesday, seven of the nine starters were 25 or younger, including promising 23-year-old starter Nate Eovaldi, acquired in the Ramirez deal, and slick-fielding 24-year-old shortstopAdeiny Hechavarria, who came from the Blue Jays. That number could have been eight if 23-year-old catcher Rob Brantly (acquired from Detroit for Anibal Sanchez) hadn’t had the night off. Eovaldi was actually the oldest pitcher they’d had in three nights, since he was following Fernandez and 22-year-old Jacob Turner, who came with Brantly from Detroit and has a 3.31 FIP in 11 starts.

While the offense struggles to come together, other than Stanton and Logan Morrison — who is still only 25 — the pitching has been excellent. No team had a lower FIP in July than the 2.94 the Marlins did, as the bullpen has been effective and Fernandez, Eovaldi and Turner front a rotation that includes 23-year-old Henderson Alvarez, who also came from Toronto.

There’s more help on the way, as 21-year-old lefty Justin Nicolino (yet another piece from Toronto, and No. 62 on Law’s list) was recently promoted to Double-A, where he joins 2012 first-round pick Andrew Heaney in the rotation.

This new young group of Marlins will be further reinforced by what looks likely to be a top-two pick in next year’s draft, but the question here will always be about whether ownership will spend to build a competitive team or just continue to cycle off trades for minimum-salary players. At some point soon, they’ll need to decide on the future of Stanton, though trading him could bring back an enormous bounty that could potentially fill several holes.

We may be naive by expecting a Loria team to ever be successful, but for now, the baseball operations people have things pointed in the right direction in Miami — even if few care to notice.

We’re entering the final days before the July 31 trading deadline, and that means the rumor mill is running on overdrive. Every team within sniffing distance of contention looks at the available talent and prays they’ll be able to add the final piece that pushes them over the top into the playoffs, hopefully without needing to sacrifice too much of their future to do so.

The gold standard for this type of trade in recent years has been the deal the Los Angeles Dodgers pulled off in 2008, acquiring Manny Ramirez from the Boston Red Sox at the deadline and then watching as he put up a .396/.489/.743 line and nearly 3 WAR in barely two months of play. The Dodgers won their division by two games that year, and none of the prospects they surrendered ever amounted to anything. As far as deadline deals go, that’s the dream scenario.

But back here in reality, it’s incredibly rare that a late-July acquisition ever pays off like the Ramirez deal did. For all the attention and passion that gets put into following every rumor as the the deadline approaches, the most essential question often gets overlooked: Are the trades teams make to upgrade even worth the trouble?

Over the past two seasons, more than 40 trades have been made involving major league players within the six weeks of the deadline, and most are quickly forgettable. (Case in point: The hardly earth-shattering move last July 30 in which Pittsburgh and Toronto swapped Brad Lincoln and Travis Snider.) Just 11 of those players contributed even a single win of value to their new teams during that time and just two managed 2.0 WAR.

There’s obviously some additional context to be examined in here, since the new acquisitions may be taking time away from those who are decidedly less than replacement level (Matt Garza’s recent entry into an injury-tattered Texas rotation being a good example), but it’s a quick and effective way to compare across teams and seasons.

By definition, deadline moves are somewhat limited in the value they can offer a team simply because the players have spent most of the season playing elsewhere. As we cross the 100-game threshold this week, slightly less than 40 percent of the season remains to be played, so for starting pitchers that means they might be able to make 11 or 12 starts for their new clubs. Since even the best starters are worth in the 7 WAR value range for an entire season, that makes it difficult to expect more than a one- to two-win boost over replacement in the limited amount of time left in the season — and even that minimal expectation must be lowered if you’re not adding one of those truly elite pitchers in the first place, which rarely happens and won’t this year.

We’ve seen that play out over the past two years in that only five starting pitchers — Ryan Dempster, Zack Greinke, J.A. Happ and Anibal Sanchez in 2012, and Doug Fister in 2011 — contributed at least one win above replacement for their new clubs after their deadline trades. Greinke’s Angels sacrificed a package including All-Star shortstop Jean Segura to acquire him, yet of that group, only the two Tigers, Fister and Sanchez, ever threw a postseason pitch for their new clubs even though all five joined rosters that were already among the most talented in the game. With the limited impact relievers can offer over the final two months — maybe 20 to 30 innings — few deadline bullpen additions can make or break the season, either.

It’s a similar story on offense, as just six hitters added even 1.0 WAR to their new teams over the past two seasons — and that’s being generous by including Kevin Youkilis, who was traded from Boston to Chicago before June turned to July last year. In 2011, Carlos Beltran played well for the Giants but at the high cost of pitcher Zack Wheeler, and the Giants missed the playoffs. While Hunter Pence was outstanding for the Phillies that year, providing 2.5 WAR as the only recent offensive example of a player giving his team a huge boost, he also did it for a team that won its division by 13 games. (The next year, Pence was among the least valuable additions at the 2012 deadline, hitting just .219/.287/.384 for San Francisco.)

If there’s value to be had from players moved in deadline deals, it’s more often than not found in subsequent seasons. That seems obvious when you’re the team doing the selling, as David Schoenfield noted when he outlined how much success Texas has had picking up prospects over the past decade (despite being on the losing end of such a deal in 2011 when the Rangers sent Chris Davis to Baltimore). But it’s also why buyers place so much value on adding players who aren’t simply rentals, since the future full year(s) of control they’re adding can be so much more important than the two months immediately ahead.

For example, Hanley Ramirez provided the Dodgers with a nice boost over incumbents Dee Gordon and Luis Cruz when he came over from Miami last July, but the 1.5 WAR he brought wasn’t enough to get them into the playoffs. This year, when healthy, he has been among the most valuable players in the game and a focal point of the Dodgers’ recent run to first place.

Fister was not only excellent down the stretch in 2011, but he has continued to be one of the more valuable and underrated starters in the game ever since. It’s team control that makes Houston starter Bud Norris an appealing target, even though he may not be as desirable otherwise as a rental like Garza.

With the recent changes in the collective bargaining agreement to restrict draft pick compensation, midseason trades have become even more problematic. Players traded midseason are no longer eligible to receive qualifying offers that would entitle their teams to collect an extra draft pick if they leave, further limiting the value of those acquired during the year. It also means that the trading team wants to be compensated for the loss of that pick as well.

As we’ve already seen this year, there are fewer impact players on the market than ever, hurt by the second wild card and the industry trend of locking up young players on long-term contracts before they reach free agency. That may make the trade deadline less fun, but it’s probably a good thing for teams looking to buy — more often than not, the desired in-season impact just isn’t there.

If it seems like everything is finally going right for the Los Angeles Dodgers these days, that’s only because it more or less is in comparison to how miserable the first three months of the season had gone. After a seemingly endless stretch of injuries and ineptitude, they’ve finally managed to get healthy — or something close to it — and play like the talent-laden team most had expected them to be.

Since a loss on June 20 to San Diego that sunk the Dodgers to a season-worst 12 games under .500 and 9 1/2 games out in the division, they’ve won 19 of 24, and put themselves right on the heels of the first-place Arizona Diamondbacks.

It’s not difficult to see how. Rookie sensation Yasiel Puig has made an enormous splash, hitting .391/.422/.616 through the All-Star break while wowing fans both on defense and on the basepaths. Shortstop Hanley Ramirez was somehow even better, hitting .386/.444/.693 after finally returning from injuries to both his thumb and hamstring. But the fact is Puig and Ramirez can’t keep this up all season, and if the Dodgers are going to make the playoffs, they’re going to need to get their two key performers some help.

In Puig’s case, the downturn has already begun, and while many like to point to the shocking amount of press coverage he’s received — not all of it friendly — there’s no shortage of real-world reasons. Puig isn’t going to contribute all season the way he did in his first few weeks in the big leagues simply because more than 100 years of established baseball history dictates that he can’t.

Over the first month (28 games) of his career, the 22-year-old Cuban was hitting .440 with a .506 batting average on balls in play. It’s just not realistic to expect that pace to last all season long, and the rational laws of nature mean that his next few months are not going to be as great as his first. It’s not a drag on Puig to say that; it’s just the way this sport works.

Of course, Puig has more working against him than merely the inevitable regression back to reality. On July 3, he slammed into the right-field wall at Coors Field, eventually needing to leave the game due to a sore left hip.

That injury bothered him so much that he was pulled out of back-to-back games early on July 11 and 12, and then wasn’t in the starting lineup for either of the final two games of the first half on July 13 and 14. It’s difficult to think that the pain hasn’t had an impact, since he was hitting .440/.466/.743 with eight homers before that game, and just .256/.310/.282 without a home run since.

The final issue for Puig is that pitchers are beginning to realize that his hyper-aggressiveness knows no bounds, and are taking advantage of his propensity to give away plate appearances by feeding him increasing amounts of low-and-away breaking pitches.

For example, in June, only 19.1 percent of the pitches he saw were sliders. In July, that’s up to 27.2 percent. In June, 40.6 percent of all pitches to him were within the strike zone; that figure has dropped in July and is among the lowest in all of baseball. The combination of all these factors has led to Puig’s swinging strike percentage in July coming in at 23.8 percent, the third-worst in the game this month.

Puig is young and undeniably talented, so as his hip heals and he learns to make adjustments, he’ll be fine. But he won’t perform like he did for most of June, so as he and Ramirez (.387 BABIP) inevitably come back to earth, the rest of the lineup is going to need to step up. First baseman Adrian Gonzalez has been steady all season and third basemanJuan Uribe has miraculously not been a black hole for once, so the burden falls squarely on second base and the remainder of the outfield.

Nowhere is that need more acute than in center field, where Matt Kemp has struggled all season to regain his form after offseason left shoulder surgery. After missing most of June with a hamstring injury, Kemp played just 10 games before re-injuring the shoulder on July 5. When he’s been able to play, he’s offered little, contributing a minus-1.1 WAR that ranks among the worst in the game. Kemp is expected to return shortly after the break, and whileAndre Ethier has been surprisingly decent covering in center field, regaining the healthy and fearsome Kemp the Dodgers enjoyed prior to 2012 is crucial.

In fact, despite the apparent problem of having four outfielders for three spots, the limited availability of the fragile Carl Crawford and the absence of Kemp has meant that too often, manager Don Mattingly has had to start backups Jerry Hairston Jr., Skip Schumaker or Scott Van Slyke in the corners. While Crawford has been effective when he can play, it’s now been since late May that he has been both fully healthy and productive.

The other trouble spot is at the keystone, where veteran Mark Ellis, along with the iron-gloved Schumaker and utility man Nick Punto, have struggled on both sides of the ball. Combined, Dodgers second basemen have been below replacement level, making this the most likely spot in the lineup for general manager Ned Colletti to upgrade. It’s difficult to think that this isn’t an ideal landing spot for Los Angeles native Chase Utley should Philadelphia decide to sell.

The fabulously wealthy Dodgers still boast an embarrassment of riches, along with a rotation now reinforced by a healthy Zack Greinke and a newly-added Ricky Nolasco. But they can’t simply depend on Puig and Ramirez all season long, and without increased support from the rest of their lineup, their march back to first place might very well fall short.

Neal Huntington had been general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates for little more than a season in early 2009 when he made a trade that was intensely unpopular among Pirates fans. Center fielder Nate McLouth was just 27 years old and coming off an All-Star campaign in 2008 that was worth 3.5 wins above replacement, when he was suddenly shipped off to the Atlanta Braves for three prospects.

What made the trade especially sting for the Pittsburgh faithful was the fact Huntington had signed McLouth to a three-year contract extension less than four months earlier, positioning McLouth as one of the faces of the next good Pirates team; this wasn’t the usual “trade them before they can leave” cycle that had been happening in Pittsburgh for years and fans felt betrayed.

Worse, the trade was made on the unusually early date of June 3, leaving Huntington vulnerable to accusations that he’d already given up on yet another Pirates season by trading the club’s best player — McLouth was off to a good start, hitting .256/.349/.470 at the time — when the team was just four games under .500.

After having traded Jason Bay the year before and then proceeding to also move veteran infielders Adam LaRoche, Freddy Sanchez and Jack Wilson, among others, at the July trading deadline, Huntington infamously added that “it wasn’t like we were breaking up the ’27 Yankees.” That only further stoked fan discontent as they stared at yet another rebuilding process, and the Pirates eventually bottomed out at 105 losses in 2010.

Four years after the trade, McLouth has been a disappointment, bouncing from Atlanta, back to Pittsburgh and now on to Baltimore. The Pirates have the third most wins in baseball in 2013 and are virtually assured of their first winning season since 1992. And the McLouth trade, the one that was so reviled at the time? It’s the trade that keeps on giving, having brought Pittsburgh 40 percent of its current starting rotation and, by extension, half of its regular first-base platoon.

In exchange for McLouth, the Braves sent pitching prospects Jeff Locke and Charlie Morton and outfielder Gorkys Hernandez to Pittsburgh. The now 25-year-old Locke has developed into a valuable and important starter in his first full season for the Pirates, pitching more innings than anyone else on the staff while being named as a National League All-Star — just the third time the Pirates have had a starting pitcher gain that honor since 1995. As the rotation has weathered injuries to A.J. Burnett, James McDonald andWandy Rodriguez, while seeing 11 different pitchers make a start, Locke is the only Pirates starter to remain in the rotation all season long.

The advanced stats don’t really support the assertion that he’s suddenly a superstar. Locke walks too many (3.88 BB/9) and strikes out too few (6.03 K/9) to be thought of in the same class as the truly elite pitchers in baseball. That’s why his FIP of 3.82 is so much higher than his ERA of 2.15. That said, any pitcher with a FIP below 4.00 is absolutely providing value, and Locke has held opponents to three runs or fewer in 16 of his 18 starts, including the past 15 in a row.

Morton’s path since coming to Pittsburgh has been a bit more up-and-down. He was decent for the Pirates for the rest of 2009 after the trade, but was then one of the worst pitchers in baseball in 2010 as he gave up home run after home run — 15 in just 79 2/3 innings. He came back in 2011 as an extreme ground ball pitcher who had mimicked Roy Halladay’s delivery and gave the Pirates a solid 29 starts. He then blew out his elbow last June, requiring Tommy John surgery. Once again healthy, Morton has returned to join Locke, Burnett, reclamation project Francisco Liriano and top prospect Gerrit Cole in the rotation, showing a surprising increase in velocity and an extreme ground ball rate of 62.7 percent, as well as a 3.38 ERA.

As for Hernandez — once a top prospect with Atlanta — his bat never really progressed. The sum of his on-field contributions to the Pirates consists of 26 punchless plate appearances last summer. But even he has brought value to Pittsburgh, since Huntington swapped him — along with a compensatory draft pick — to the Miami Marlins for first baseman Gaby Sanchez and a minor league pitcher last July. Sanchez rebounded with the Pirates after having been sent to the minors with the Marlins, and while a .234/.336/.403 line in parts of two seasons with Pittsburgh may not look like much, he’s still been worth one win over replacement in that time.

All told, the quartet of Hernandez, Locke, Morton and Sanchez has been worth 4.7 wins above replacement for the Pirates, as well as still retaining nine additional years of combined team control for Pittsburgh beyond 2013. Conversely, McLouth was worth just 0.3 WAR with the Braves, even being demoted to the minors for a time, leaving Atlanta after the Braves declined to exercise his option following 2011.

The benefits from the McLouth trade even went beyond the return in players from Atlanta. At the time of the trade, the Pirates had a 22-year-old center field prospect waiting for his chance while hitting .303/.361/.493 in Triple-A. Andrew McCutchen made his major league debut the next day and scored three runs. He hasn’t stopped producing since, contributing 3.4 WAR over the remainder of the season and 23.0 over his career to date as one of the brightest young stars in baseball.

Not every veteran-for-prospects trade works out, as Huntington himself could tell you. For example, of the four players the Pirates received for Bay, only middle reliever Bryan Morris remains in the organization. Even the trades that do work out usually defer the benefits for years down the road, just as this one has, and that can be tough for fans to swallow. But for a trade that was so despised by hometown fans at the time, Huntington managed to both improve at the position that the trade was made from by promoting from within and collect valuable young talent that’s paying off for a Pirates team that’s finally in position to contend. It’s a lesson worth remembering as other teams gauge whether to buy or sell at this year’s deadline.

On the first day of July, the Los Angeles Dodgers woke up to find themselves in exactly the same place they’d been for most of the previous two months: buried in last place in the National League West. They were barely more than a week past a loss that had put them a season-high 9½ games out and 12 games under .500; as late as June 22, they had more losses than all but four other teams.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way for a club that had famously gone from the penniless depths of the Frank McCourt era to the dizzying heights of the Guggenheim group and their seemingly bottomless pockets. The nouveau riche Dodgers were supposed to storm through the National League, stomping over anyone foolish enough to stand in their way. Instead, the most popular discussion topic among fans has been when — not if — manager Don Mattingly would be fired.

But thanks to some fortunate circumstances, the Dodgers have managed to stay within spitting distance of first place. Here are three reasons they are the most dangerous losing team in baseball.

1. DL-free!
While many like to point to a lack of chemistry or some karmic retribution for the spending spree for the failures of this team, there’s one very clear reason to point to: a total inability to stay healthy. The Dodgers have used the disabled list 20 times on 15 players, with maladies ranging from the expected (Chad Billingsley’s elbow giving out) to the unfortunate (Hanley Ramirez injuring his thumb in the final innings of the World Baseball Classic) to the downright absurd (Zack Greinke breaking his collarbone during an April brawl).

The injury bug was so severe that the mocking of “$200 million dollars bought this?” — while understandable — was somewhat off the mark, since so much of that dollar amount was sidelined at any given time. Put it this way — the Dodgers played their 83rd game of the season in Colorado on Wednesday night, and it marked the first time that Mattingly was able to have Greinke pitching in front of both Ramirez and Matt Kemp.

2. Bad division
In most divisions, these kinds of injuries would have sealed their fate. The Dodgers would have been 13 games out on July 1 if they played in the NL Central, and at least nine out in every other division except the AL Central. Since even the third-best team in the NL Central had eight more wins, the wild cards would seem to be out of the question, making a path to the playoffs a difficult one.

Fortunately for the Dodgers, they play in the NL West, a division that has no truly terrible clubs but also no clearly good ones. The Arizona Diamondbacks currently sit in first place but are just one game over .500 themselves after a 7-14 slide over the last three weeks. It’s been so bad in the NL West that since June 1, Colorado, San Diego and San Francisco represent three of the four worst teams in the league.

Still, the good luck of playing in such a lightweight division wouldn’t have really mattered if the Dodgers had continued playing like they had been all season, watching Luis Cruz pop out endlessly while Kemp struggled to regain his form after offseason shoulder surgery. While the earlier losses still count in the standings just as much as any other, the roster that put the team in that hole is markedly different from the one Mattingly is rolling out today.

3. Puig and the gang
The Dodgers’ ascent up the standings all starts with Cuban sensation Yasiel Puig, who arrived on June 3 after Kemp, Carl Crawford and catcher A.J. Ellis all went on the disabled list. Despite some apprehension over whether the raw Cuban was ready to handle the bigs, Puig has taken the sport by storm. In his debut, he showed off a rocket arm by ending the game with a 9-3 double play from right field; in his second, he hit two home runs. He hasn’t stopped yet, putting up a ludicrous .443/.473/.745 line in his first month and finishing second only to Joe DiMaggio as far as hits in the first month of a career.

Yet even the smashing play of Puig wasn’t really enough, as the team lost 10 of his first 17 games. But on June 14, Ellis returned from the disabled list, taking playing time away from Tim Federowicz (.244 wOBA) and the since-released Ramon Hernandez (.315 wOBA). That same day, Ramirez returned to the lineup full-time after a stop-and-start comeback from an injured hamstring, adding a red-hot .472 wOBA to a team that had suffered through months of lousy play from Dee Gordon (.235 wOBA) and Justin Sellers (.236 wOBA). In the bullpen, strikeout machine Kenley Jansen took Brandon League’s job, while free-agent bust Matt Guerrier was moved in favor of younger talent.

It goes on. Plate appearances that had previously gone to ineffective bench players like Jerry Hairston Jr. (.287 wOBA) and Skip Schumaker (.274 wOBA) were now going to Puig. Rather than the atrocious Cruz (.155 wOBA), the shockingly rejuvenated Juan Uribe (.321 wOBA) took over at third. As Crawford (.358 wOBA) returns this week to give the team the leadoff hitter they were missing, Mattingly will finally have his full team, and we’ve seen what that collection is capable of as they’ve won nine of their last 10 — and picked up seven games in nine days.

Mattingly hasn’t suddenly become a better manager, but he is running a different team. Thanks to a division that didn’t put this club away when they had the chance, the ongoing brilliance of Clayton Kershaw and the massive impact of Puig, the Dodgers are poised to make a lot of noise down the stretch — even if, for now, they’re still under .500.

When you’ve lost eight games in a row — and 12 of 13, and 19 of 23 — as the Kansas City Royals had after dropping a game to the St. Louis Cardinals on May 29, changes need to be made. In Kansas City’s case, that meant removing hitting coaches Andre David and Jack Maloof in favor of team legend George Brett, hoping to kick-start a tremendously disappointing offense.

The Royals were 21-29 when Brett came aboard, and they’re 15-11 since. Brett, predictably, has been given a good deal of credit for shaking things up, with general manager Dayton Moore being sure to highlight Brett’s “energy” and “passion” in a conversation with Buster Olney earlier this month. So it seems like the change in the coaching staff to bring in a Hall of Famer must have had an impact, right? Well, not exactly.

When the Royals dismissed David and Maloof, they were hitting a collective .261/.314/.375. In June, under Brett, they’ve turned that all the way up to … .255/.310/.366. The offense hasn’t really improved under Brett at all, and, in fact, is performing slightly worse than they had been before. That the Royals have been winning more games can be readily attributed to solid pitching and defense that has given them a 2.75 ERA over the month, good for third-best in baseball and a marked improvement over their season-long 3.52 mark.

The ineffective Royals attack, which ranks 26th in MLB in wRC+, has been held back by three very clear issues — Moore’s inability to move on from a few underperforming veterans, the odd choices in the batting order made by manager Ned Yost, and the stunning lack of progress made by the supposed young core of the future. Brett seems likely to be able to impact only one of those items.
[+] EnlargeJeff Francouer
Tim Larson/Icon SMIJeff Francouer is hitting just .212/.254/.330 and striking out in 25 percent of his at-bats.

When Moore traded a package of prospects headlined by outfielder Wil Myers to Tampa Bay for Wade Davis and James Shields last winter, the move was largely panned in baseball circles, and it had little to do with whether Shields was a rotation improvement. It was because of this simple equation: Jeff Francoeur versus Myers. Francoeur hit .235/.287/.378 while being a negative on defense last season, and the ensuing -1.4 WAR made him one of the least valuable players in baseball. So far this season, he’s been even worse, hitting .212/.254/.330 while striking out more than a quarter of the time, yet he’s still started 49 times in right field.

Only recently has Yost began to sit Francoeur more often in favor of David Lough, but as Myers has impressed since being recalled by the Rays earlier this month, the same questions that came up last winter are being heard again: Is the improvement that Shields brought to the rotation — and he has been very good — more than could have been gained by simply adding a league-average starter and replacing Francoeur’s special brand of awful with Myers in right field? So far, that’s not looking like an answer that will come out in Moore’s favor.

The situation is similar at second base, where Moore has insisted on sticking with the appallingly ineffective duo of Chris Getz and Elliot Johnson, at least until finally demoting Getz last weekend. Kansas City second basemen are hitting just .233/.279/.318, which is better than only the two struggling Chicago clubs. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Johnny Giavotella, hitting .320/.391/.462 in more than 1,200 Triple-A plate appearances, languishes in Omaha. Unless Brett can force Moore to make some roster moves, the simple talent gap at second base and right field will be difficult for the new hitting coach to overcome.

Yost’s often confounding batting orders aren’t helping matters, either. Though he’s been forward-thinking enough to use the hardly fleet-of-foot Alex Gordon as his leadoff man, he’s given much of that advantage away by using shortstop Alcides Escobar and his atrocious .279 on-base percentage as his No. 2 hitter for much of the year.

Interestingly enough, Yost briefly took the advice of Kansas City’s data analysis team, resetting the lineup to push Escobar to the end and move Eric Hosmer up to second. In 16 games beginning June 5 and ending when Yost restored Escobar to the top on Thursday, the Royals scored 4.12 runs per game. That’s better than the 3.89 mark they’ve had over the entire season, and while the impact of batting order is generally overrated, ensuring that your worst hitters get the most plate appearances isn’t often going to end well.

The final issue, and the one where Brett can have the most impact, is in the inability of their two highly touted corner infielders to develop into reliable big-league hitters. Last season, 22-year-old first baseman Hosmer and 23-year-old third baseman Mike Moustakas each failed to deliver on the optimism that their minor league track records and 2011 debuts had promised. Moustakas at least managed to provide value with good defense and 20 homers around a poor .242/.296/.412 line, though Hosmer fell apart completely at .232/.304/.359. Remember that list from earlier about the least valuable players in baseball last season? Only two other players caused more damage to their teams than Francoeur … and one was Hosmer.

So far this year, Moustakas has fallen completely off the cliff at .214/.274/.314, losing his power while facing even more difficulty in getting on base. Through the first two months, Hosmer was right there with him, hitting only a single homer with a mediocre line of .261/.320/.333. But if there’s a bright spot here, it’s that Hosmer has looked like an improved hitter in June, hitting .290/.337/.473 with three homers through Wednesday.

Is that simply a hot streak or due to Brett’s influence? It remains to be seen, though Hosmer recently told MLB.com that Brett had him focus more on shifting his weight to pull balls to right field, work which has shown up in Hosmer’s spray charts.

There’s only so much that any hitting coach can do to improve an offense, since the single greatest item that affects run production is the amount of talent on the field. Brett can’t do much to solve the questionable decisions made in the front office or on the lineup card. The numbers bear out that the offense, overall, has not improved during his short tenure, even if the win/loss record says otherwise. But if he can do nothing else other than reach Hosmer and turn him back into something like the top prospect the team once expected, it might be worth the effort in making the change in itself.

The last time the baseball world saw Alex Rodriguez, he was suffering through one of the more dismal Octobers in recent memory. Rodriguez managed a mere three singles over seven games against the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers, but the box score really doesn’t tell the entire story. He was regularly benched and pinch hit for during the playoffs, a prospect that would have seemed unthinkable just months earlier.

Since then, everything new we’ve heard about Rodriguez has been problematic. In January, he underwent surgery to repair a torn hip labrum that had been bothering him during the playoffs and has kept him from playing in 2013. A few weeks ago, his name once again came up at the center of the ongoing Biogenesis PED scandal that Major League Baseball wants so badly to come down hard on him and others for.

It’s probably not a stretch to suggest that Rodriguez is the least popular name in baseball these days, and as he turns 38 next month, he’s clearly a shell of the dominant superstar he once was. Considering that the Yankees have jumped out to a surprising 39-33 start without him, more than a few New York fans would be all too happy to see him quietly go away and never come back, despite the four years and $86 million he still has coming to him after this season.

But for all the baggage he brings, the Yankees could really use him right about now.

Punchless lineup

It would usually sound odd to say that there’s surprise in the fact that the generally mighty Yankees have managed to stay in the race, but there’s little that’s usual about this year’s team, which has had to rely on castoffs such as Reid Brignac, Jayson Nix, Thomas Neal, Lyle Overbay, Chris Stewart and Vernon Wells while A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson andMark Teixeira deal with injuries.

Somehow, at the midway point of May, the Yankees were up by two games in the tough American League East thanks to surprising performances from Overbay and Wells, in particular. But Brian Cashman’s collection of misfit toys has begun to show its cracks. Over the past 30 days, the team has a woeful .264 wOBA that rates as the worst mark in baseball; unsurprisingly, the Yankees have slumped and now sit in third place.

The problem is particularly acute at third base, where Yankees third basemen have combined for a .235/.292/.371 line, good for a .271 wOBA that’s better than only four other clubs. Now that news has come down this week that Kevin Youkilis will miss most of the rest of the season due to back surgery, the Yankees are down to Jayson Nix and struggling 26-year-old rookie David Adams (.200/.220/.313) at the position. If this team plans to stay in contention, it will need an improvement at the hot corner, but that’s unlikely to come from a thin trade market or the nonprospects manning the spot at either of its top two minor league affiliates.

A-Rod’s upside

That’s where Rodriguez can still be useful. No, he isn’t the same player who hit .358 as a 20-year-old shortstop in 1996, and he’s not close to the hitter who has eight seasons with at least 40 home runs. At this point in his career, he’s all but certainly not worth a fraction of the salary that’s still owed to him. But then, he doesn’t really need to be, does he? To help the Yankees right now, he merely needs to be better than Adams and Nix, and that seems like a bar that even a diminished Rodriguez is capable of clearing.

But what exactly can Rodriguez provide? No one knows how this hip injury will affect him, though it’s worth noting that the Rodriguez we saw struggling so badly in October wasn’t the same one we had seen all year. Over Rodriguez’s first 97 games (through July 24), he was carrying a line of .276/.358/.449 with slightly below average defense. If that seems like far less than vintage Rodriguez, note that AL third basemen as a whole this year are hitting .258/.317/.401. If you compare Rodriguez not to the elite superstar he once was but to the current collection of third basemen in the league, that’s still an above average hitter.

We chose July 24 of last year because that was the day that Rodriguez’s left hand was fractured by a pitch from Seattle Mariners ace Felix Hernandez. Rodriguez returned Sept. 2 at the low end of the original six-to-eight week estimate, and as so often happens with hand injuries, his short-term power was missing; he hit just .261/.341/.369 for the remainder of the season. By the time he made it to the playoffs, his hip was a concern as well, so the Rodriguez we saw getting benched in October was a different player than the one playing well in July.

Rodriguez has begun taking batting practice with an eye on a return around the All-Star break. If he is merely league average for the remainder of the season, starting a few times a week at third base and giving Travis Hafner a break against lefty pitching at designated hitter, it probably won’t win him back any fans and would likely qualify as the worst season of his sterling career. But even that would still count as a pretty nice upgrade over what the Yankees currently have.