Few teams took more public heat than the Arizona Diamondbacks this winter, and for good reason: They seemed to be on the short end of the talent stick in nearly all of their trades. Out went the defense and power of longtime center fielder Chris Young, shipped to the Oakland A’s in a three-way deal that brought back low-offense middle infielder Cliff Pennington and Miami Marlins free agent/bullpen bust Heath Bell. Gone was 21-year-old starter Trevor Bauer, barely more than a year removed from being the No. 3 pick in the draft, for reliever Tony Sipp and the questionable offensive track record of minor league shortstop Didi Gregorius.

Those moves were merely appetizers for the main course: the trade of outfielder Justin Upton to the Atlanta Braves despite his being just a year removed from a top-five MVP finish and headed into his age-25 season. Upton (along with third baseman Chris Johnson) brought back Martin Prado and four prospects, and, although Prado had long been a solid, versatile player for the Braves, few would argue he possesses anything like the pure raw skill Upton does.

The tenor of the moves might have been easier to infer if not for the fact that general manager Kevin Towers was more than happy to be upfront with his intentions, even telling reporters, “We kind of like that grinding, gritty player.” In essence, he wanted to remake the team in the image of Kirk Gibson, his famously crusty manager.

So the new gritty direction must be working out, right? Well, not exactly. Prado has been mostly awful, and Pennington has been replacement-level. Willie Bloomquist — the epitome of grit — and outfield import Cody Ross have battled injury while contributing little. Grit is very often associated with small-ball tactics, and this Arizona club doesn’t really play that way; the Diamondbacks rank 26th in stolen bases and are tied for 23rd in bunt hits, and only two other NL teams have fewer sacrifice bunts.

Although there’s certainly an argument to be made for Arizona’s improved clubhouse culture, the Diamondbacks’ current standing atop the NL West isn’t really because of the “grinder” squad. It’s because of talent: They’ve had a few hot starts on both sides of the ball, while facing rivals who have failed to live up to expectations.

Breakout bats

Any discussion of Arizona production starts first and foremost at first base, where Paul Goldschmidt has turned himself into an absolute stud. After a solid first full season in 2012 (.286/.359/.490 with 20 home runs), Goldschmidt has broken out as one of the better hitters in baseball, already collecting 15 homers in 300-plus fewer plate appearances than last year. His line of .313/.390/.565 is impressive, and not only because the resulting .406wOBA is good for third among first basemen, behind Chris Davis and Joey Votto. He’s also among just nine hitters at any position with a mark north of .400. Before this season, Arizona inked the first baseman to a five-year, $32.5 million extension, a move that is quickly looking like a steal, considering that Votto is making more than half of that total in 2013 alone.

The other surprising offensive cog so far — with apologies to productive outfielder Gerardo Parra — has been shortstop Gregorius, who came up in April when second baseman Aaron Hill broke his hand. In parts of five seasons in the Cincinnati Reds’ organization, Gregorius put up an OBP higher than .324 just once, back in rookie ball in 2009, and otherwise had failed to show particularly impressive power or baserunning ability. That, despite flashy defense, made for valid concerns about his future as a major league hitter.

But that didn’t prevent Gregorious from making a big splash this year, hitting .369/.424/.595 in his first 22 games — 14 of which were Arizona victories. But that stretch came with a clearly unsustainable .412 BABIP, and, in the 21 games since, he’s back to a more realistic .241/.330/.329. But those hits (and team wins) from his first few weeks have already been banked.

Electric arms

The pitching staff has its own breakout artist, 23-year-old lefty Patrick Corbin. He didn’t even lock down a spot in the rotation until the final days of camp, but, by June 2, he was the first nine-game winner in the big leagues. Although no one should expect him to keep his ERA around 2.00 through the season, a 3.05 FIPremains solid, and he has been a surprisingly reliable piece in a rotation that has dealt with a poor season from Ian Kennedy and further injury to Brandon McCarthy.

Interestingly enough, Corbin’s peripherals aren’t all that different from those in his rookie season of 2012, when he put up a 4.54 ERA. He’s striking out fewer and walking more batters this year than he did last year, and his ground ball and fly ball rates have remained relatively consistent. What Corbin has done this year is almost completely avoid the big hit, allowing only four homers in 86 2/3 innings after allowing 14 in 107 innings last season.

Corbin, Goldschmidt and Gregorius have been the three most notable names, but the heart of the Diamondbacks’ success comes from the impressive depth Towers has put together. When young outfielder Adam Eaton was injured before the season, rookie A.J. Pollock stepped up to replace him with outstanding defense despite mediocre offense. Eaton, Ross and Jason Kubel have all missed time in a revolving-door outfield, but Parra has been there with a line of .322/.388/.475 that makes him a borderline All-Star candidate. And, in the bullpen, Bell has been good enough to revive his career as he has replaced injured J.J. Putz in the ninth inning.

Should Arizona’s success be attributed to grit, talent or foresight? It’s difficult to say. The simple fact that Arizona is in first place is a pretty effective rebuke to those who laughed at its offseason strategy. That said, the team, as a whole, hasn’t been spectacular in any particular way.

On offense, the Diamondbacks rank 14th in wOBA, sitting between two losing clubs, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Milwaukee Brewers. On the mound, the pitching staff ranks 15th in FIP and 14th in ERA. By those metrics, Arizona is, perhaps, the most average team in the big leagues.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the NL West has been weaker than expected. The defending-champion San Francisco Giants are struggling to stay above .500 as their once-vaunted rotation falls apart, and the big-spending Los Angeles Dodgers have been a total mess as their roster has been destroyed by injury. Arizona’s 37-29 record is the lowest winning percentage of any division leader, and it has had difficulty pulling away from the struggling pack.

Although Corbin and Gregorius can’t be expected to maintain their early performances all season, their slides might be mitigated by the healthy returns of Eaton, Hill and Putz and the expected return to form of Prado. As its division rivals try to get back on their feet, Arizona looks positioned for a season-long run at the playoffs — regardless of the particular intangibles driving its success.

After more than a month on the sidelines recovering from an injured right hamstring, Miami Marlins outfielder Giancarlo Stanton finally began a minor-league rehab assignment this week. Barring a setback, that puts him on track to rejoin the team in the next several days. And when he does, the Marlins will have added much more than simply their starting right fielder. They will have regained potentially the most valuable trading chip in the game, at least among those players with a realistic chance to be moved this year.

It’s not at all hard to see why other teams would covet Stanton so much. He’ll play the entirety of this season at just 23 years of age, and he needs only four more home runs to become the 21st player in big league history to hit 100 homers through their age-23 season. With a big second half, he could conceivably get himself into the top 10 of that list, which is littered with inner-circle greats like Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. In the entire history of baseball (minimum 1,500 plate appearances), there’s exactly nine men with a higher isolated power mark than Stanton’s .276, and there again you’ll find the names of all-time elites like Lou Gehrig, Albert Pujols and Babe Ruth.

On most teams, Stanton’s combination of production, youth and team control — he will only be arbitration-eligible for the first time next season and can’t be a free agent until after the 2016 season — would make him an absolute untouchable. But of course the Marlins are not most teams, and as one of the few survivors of last winter’s teardown, Stanton made his unhappiness towards the club clear. So as Stanton returns and (presumably) begins to mash again for the worst team in baseball, the trade winds around him will only continue to increase.

Nearly every team in baseball will show some interest. The price, understandably, will be massive. But for as great and rare a player as Stanton is, there’s a small but growing worry: for interested teams, the best Stanton move might be the one that isn’t made at all.

On the field, there’s little not to like about Stanton. But it’s the term “on the field” that’s key here. So far, he has been absent for 40 of Miami’s first 60 games of the season; since the start of the 2011 season through Thursday, Stanton has missed 93 games, and that figure doesn’t even count the weeks at a time of spring training that he’s been sidelined for as well.

Rather than one large injury robbing him of a chunk of time, Stanton keeps missing games because of various smaller problems. In 2011, he missed nearly a month of spring training with a right quadriceps strain, then missed 11 games during the season with aches to his hamstring and toe. Last year, he again missed much of camp due to soreness in his left knee. After being sidelined for a full month of the summer thanks to right knee surgery, he came back in time to sit out again in September with a right oblique strain.

Even this year, the hamstring hasn’t been his only concern; he missed a week of games in April thanks to a sore left shoulder, then had his hamstring rehab slowed in late May by soreness in both knees when he began to jog. That’s a considerable list of injuries for someone so young, and it’s especially concerning because of the types of problems we’re seeing. Stanton hasn’t been dealing with freak occurrences like broken bones or on-field collisions; he’s almost entirely been dealing with strains, pulls and pains. Continued injuries to knees and hamstrings can quickly become chronic woes, and health is rarely a skill that usually improves with age. We’ve already seen the impact his spring training and early-season woes can have on his performance; somewhat shockingly, he has never hit a homer before April 21, and his initial long balls the last two years have come on April 29 and 27 respectively.

While no one questions Stanton’s toughness, the concern is that he is an extremely large man in a sport that is often unfriendly to those of his size. Stanton is listed on the Major League Baseball website as being 6-foot-6 and 240 pounds, and only two players have ever met each of those specifications while sticking around long enough to collect as many plate appearances as Stanton already has — Adam Dunn and Frank Howard. In fact, only one other hitter that large has ever collected as many as a mere 300 career plate appearances aside from that trio, and that’s Kyle Blanks of the San Diego Padres. Blanks is just 26 but has seen his once-promising career almost ruined by multiple trips to the disabled list, including 2010 and 2012 seasons nearly lost entirely to injury (he has yet to play in more than 55 games in a season). Though Dunn and Howard were prolific sluggers who played into their 30s, the fact that they stand as the only two ever other than Stanton to make a career out of being that large isn’t exactly a promising sign.

The amount of injuries that have already slowed Stanton should raise a significant red flag for those teams looking to acquire him. But even that won’t stop the interest. After all, how nice would Stanton look in Texas, replacing the struggling David Murphy on a team that already has a loaded roster? Or in Chicago, joining with Starlin Castro and Anthony Rizzo to form the offensive core of the next great Cubs team? Or in Seattle, which has plenty of young pitching but can’t seem to ever develop power from within? Due to Stanton’s age and time remaining before free agency, his market is unique in that it won’t be limited only to those teams looking to win in 2013.

That means that the Marlins can essentially name their price, and that’s where some of the biggest prospect names in baseball are going to come into play. It’s difficult, for example, to imagine the Rangers acquiring Stanton without giving up Jurickson Profar and probably more. You might say the same about the Pirates and Gerrit Cole, or the Mariners and Taijuan Walker. To pry loose a player who has already accomplished as much as Stanton has at such a young age, teams can expect to empty their farm systems.

In this new age of teams locking up top young players long before they reach free agency, Stanton’s availability on the market — assuming that either he won’t want to remain in Miami or that the Marlins won’t be able to afford him, which are each equally likely — is a rarity. That’s going to put the Marlins in a very enviable position should they choose to shop Stanton around, and some team is going to give up a huge ransom for him. But for as wonderful a player as Stanton can be when healthy, it’s the teams that don’t trade for him that might end up happiest.

The Detroit Tigers currently sit in first place in the American League Central, and they do so in no small part thanks to an embarrassment of starting pitching riches. For all the valid concern over Justin Verlander’s declining velocity, he remains an ace who is striking out a career-high 11.18 per nine innings. Behind him, Anibal Sanchez and Max Scherzer are each in the midst of career years, giving the Tigers three of the top four starting pitchers in terms of strikeouts per nine. As great as all three have been, not one of them limits walks or home runs like Doug Fister does; he would be a top-tier starter on many teams but is merely a No. 4 in Detroit.

As you might expect, advanced pitching statistics simply love this quartet. Sanchez (first), Verlander (third) and Scherzer (sixth) all rank among the elite starting pitchers in baseball this season when measured by Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP). Fister comes in at a more-than-respectable 16th, right behind Yu Darvish, meaning that one out of every four starting pitchers in the top 16 of FIP calls Detroit home. As a result, the collective 2.54 FIP of Tigers starters is the best in MLB (through Thursday).

Yet when you look at ERA, Detroit’s starters have a 3.62 mark, and that gap between ERA and FIP of more than an entire run is pretty massive as far as these things go. By contrast, just two other teams in baseball so far have rotations with as much as a half-run distance between their ERA and FIP.

But simply pointing out the Tigers are topping the baseball world in ERA-FIP in 2013 understates this concern by a great deal. Somewhat unbelievably, the 2013 Tigers are on pace to become the first team since the 1942 Washington Senators — and only the second in the past century — to have a rotation gap of more than a run between what the raw performance indicates they should have (FIP) and what the actual performance has been (ERA).

Typically, when you have a large gap between ERA and FIP, bad defense and/or luck are the culprits. The Tigers have one of the worst defenses in baseball, but they can solve all of their problems with one simple move: benching Victor Martinez.

Porous defense

It might seem counterintuitive to improve your defense by benching the DH, a guy who never touches a glove, but allow me to explain.

Detroit’s starters have allowed a .327 BABIP, the third highest in baseball. Although general manager Dave Dombrowski has done his best to mitigate the issue by loading his rotation with high-strikeout performers, the Tigers’ defense has largely done a poor job of turning balls in play into outs, ranking 28th in defensive efficiency. The Tigers also rate poorly in terms of defensive runs saved (25th) and UZR/150(23rd); although defensive stats aren’t above reproach in small samples, those rankings certainly pass the sniff test.

The primary culprits there are third baseman Miguel Cabrera, first baseman Prince Fielderand center fielder Austin Jackson, each of whom ranks in the bottom seven at his respective position (minimum 100 innings) according to DRS. While Jackson had previously ranked as a decent outfielder and a third of a season of defensive statistics shouldn’t be overemphasized, Cabrera and Fielder have long been regarded as below-average defenders.

The often leaky defense didn’t stop the Tigers last season when they went on a run to the World Series with much of the same lineup, and it hasn’t prevented them from getting off to a good start in 2013. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement to assist a pitching staff that is getting little defensive support, and when we’re seeing an ERA-FIP gap that hasn’t been seen in more than seven decades, there’s definitely a reason to upgrade.

Martinez, 34, has a .225/.275/.307 line, making him the least productive designated hitter in baseball. If we remove the “DH” requirement, it somehow looks worse, since Martinez’s .255 wOBA puts him in the bottom 14 of all hitters, and when your DH is looking up at guys like Zack Cozart and Ben Revere, that’s not a great position to be in.

Martinez was expected to be a nice re-addition to the Tigers’ lineup after missing 2012 due to a knee injury, but instead he is on the verge of career worsts in both walk rate and strikeout rate. The hole he’s causing at designated hitter, giving negative value at the plate and none in the field, sets up the dominoes in such a way that one move could improve the Tigers at a few spots.

That move, of course, is to find a defensive improvement at third base, and that’s no slight intended to Cabrera. He deserves a good deal of credit for taking a position switch that seemed laughable at the time and actually making it work, all the while continuing his offensive dominance. “Being better than most thought” isn’t quite the same as being a plus at the position, however, and with Martinez contributing little, the Tigers could be better served by moving one of their two designated hitters in the infield corners (or both, in a 1B/DH time-share) off the field while keeping them each in the daily lineup.

Possible solutions

So whom might the Tigers look at? Former third baseman of the future Nick Castellanos is playing outfield in Triple-A these days and still needs work at the plate, so any improvement here would likely come from outside the organization. GM Dave Dombrowski could go in one of two directions.

Detroit could look for a defensively gifted glove-first man at third, figuring that merely the offensive equivalent to Martinez would still be an improvement if it came with a big fielding upgrade over Cabrera. While the names in this group aren’t exactly going to sell tickets, the upshot is the cost of acquisition ought to be minimal. Dombrowski could look to Houston for Matt Dominguez, or to Los Angeles for Luis Cruz or Juan Uribe, or to Cincinnati for little-used Jack Hannahan. None is a plus at the plate — though Uribe has surprisingly turned himself into a walk machine this year — but they just need to approximate what Martinez has provided to be worthwhile, and each ranks as good-to-excellent with the glove.

Another option would be to target a glove-first shortstop, such as Brendan Ryan, and shift shortstop Jhonny Peralta to third, a position he has played in the past. Peralta is not known for his range at short, and you could potentially improve two spots with such a move.

Or, as seems to be more the team’s style, the Tigers could go big. They have made it to the World Series and lost it twice in the past seven years; it has now been nearly three decades since the 1984 team took home the title. As Cabrera and Verlander enter their 30s, Dombrowski could decide the time is right to make a big splash by trading a prospect package with names like Castellanos, outfielder Avisail Garcia and/or pitcher Drew Smyly for a more established third base name like Chase Headley or Kyle Seager.

As long as the Tigers’ rotation keeps up its excellent performance — as does the bullpen, which has combined for a 9.91 K/9, third-best in baseball — Detroit can get by despite a subpar defense. But it’s difficult to think that continuing to post an ERA-FIP gap larger than we’ve seen since before Jackie Robinson’s time is acceptable, and as the trading season heats up, Dombrowski would do well to take advantage of an empty designated hitter spot to better support his otherwise outstanding pitching.

How can you tell which relievers have had the most impact for their teams? Some might simply say “saves”, though that immediately eliminates any pitcher who hasn’t been given the opportunity to pitch in the ninth inning. It also doesn’t seem quite right to say that Huston Street and Tom Wilhelmsen, for example, have performed equally. Each has 11 saves, but Street has struggled with a 6.96 FIP while Wilhelmsen has been far more effective at 2.43.

Others might point to ERA, though it can be very unreliable over small amounts of innings, especially since it poorly accounts for ownership of inherited runners. We can see that with the case of Kansas City’s Tim Collins, who has actually been very good this year with a 1.75 FIP and 10 scoreless outings in 13 appearances. But thanks to one poor game earlier in the month, he saw his ERA jump from 2.79 to 5.59 overnight.

So what can we use that applies equally to all relief pitchers, regardless of role, yet also takes into consideration the primary job of getting outs (or not) in the most crucial situations? For that, we turn to shutdowns, a FanGraphs stat that attempts to measure the most basic question of “did a relief pitcher help or hinder his team’s chances of winning a game?”

Shutdowns (and its negative equivalent, “meltdowns”) works on the premise of win probability added. You can read the full description here, but it is essentially a context-based stat that identifies how important each play in a game was towards a team winning or losing.

This works perfectly for relievers, since the setup man who enters with the bases loaded in the eighth is often much more directly involved in the outcome than the closer who gets to start a clean inning in the ninth, even though it’s the latter pitcher who will get the “save”. Shutdowns are awarded when a pitcher increases his team’s win probability by at least 6 percent in a game, while meltdowns come when a reliever costs his team by at least that same amount.

Using shutdowns, who finds themselves on the top five list of most essential relievers this year? The answers, in some cases, may surprise you.

1. Mark Melancon, Pirates (17 shutdowns)
The top shutdown reliever in baseball so far is… who? Traded three times in less than three years and fresh off a 6.20 ERA and a long stint in the minors for the Boston Red Sox last season, no reliever in baseball has had a larger direct positive impact on his team’s fortune than the 28-year-old Pittsburgh righty. Relying on improved location and heavier use of his cut fastball, Melancon has been a revelation with the Pirates, posting an otherworldly 26-1 K/BB ratio. No pitcher with as many innings as he has tops his 64.1 percent ground ball rate, and when you’re getting strikeouts and grounders while almost entirely avoiding home runs and walks, success will almost certainly follow.

What of Melancon’s Pittsburgh teammate, Jason Grilli? The first-time closer has been outstanding as well, leading baseball in saves while sporting an excellent 32-5 K/BB mark of his own. But for as great as he’s been, Grilli ties only for just 18th in shutdowns since many of his saves have come with him starting a clean inning with a lead of a few runs, leading to low WPA. Melancon, on the other hand, has been in the thick of tight situations all season.

2. Edward Mujica, Cardinals (15)
Mujica didn’t begin the season as the St. Louis closer, and he didn’t get his first save chance until April 18, once Mitchell Boggs failed to adequately replace the injured Jason Motte. That keeps Mujica out of the top five list on the save charts, but he’s been so good that he’s been credited with a shutdown in 15 of his first 19 appearances.

Incredibly, Mujica is essentially getting by with just a single pitch, his lethal “split-change”, and he’s managed to control it with such efficiency that he hasn’t allowed a walk since April 3, in his second outing of the season. Stolen from the Miami Marlins for minor league third baseman Zack Cox last season, he’d spent most of the last seven years being decent but unremarkable for Cleveland, San Diego and Miami; now, thanks to reliance on his unhittable out pitch, he’s become one of the most dangerous relievers in the game.

t-3. Jesse Crain, White Sox/Mariano Rivera, Yankees (14)
Sometimes conventional wisdom and next-level thinking come to the same conclusion, and it hardly takes an advanced doctorate in statistics to point out that the immortal Rivera remains one of the best relievers in the game. That’s the case whether you’re using saves (second in MLB) or shutdowns (third).

The appearance of Crain ahead of Reed on this list shows how important the game can often be in the seventh and eighth innings, but the long-time setup man has quietly been an effective reliever in each of his three years in Chicago. After parts of seven years toiling in the Minnesota bullpen, Crain joined the White Sox prior to 2011 and has subsequently posted swinging-strike percentages of at least 11.6 percent each year, after never having topped 9.6 percent as a Twin. Crain’s name recognition remains low among casual fans, though that may not be fair to him.

t-5. Aroldis Chapman, Reds/Jim Johnson, Orioles/Addison Reed, White Sox
Reed has been steady all season long, only three times allowing more than a single hit in an outing while striking out 24 in 21 innings. Chapman, meanwhile, finds himself tied for 12th on the saves list with several other closers, one behind Street and one ahead of embattled Los Angeles Dodgers closer Brandon League, who is on the verge of losing his job.

That makes using saves problematic because it’s not adequately showing just how dominating Chapman continues to be, despite some homer trouble in Philadelphia last weekend. Although Chapman spent much of the spring preparing for an aborted attempt to move into the starting rotation, manager Dusty Baker has yet to allow him to pitch more than a single inning this year. That leads to oddities like the fact that lesser teammates like Sam LeCure and Logan Ondrusek have each pitched more innings in May than Chapman has. Despite the limited opportunities, few pitchers have managed to shut down the opposition as well as Chapman has, and the Reds may be better served by thinking outside the box to use him more often.

Johnson has not quite had the batted ball luck of the magical 2012 season in Baltimore on his side, seeing his BABIP rise from .251 to a more realistic .306. That’s largely why his ERA and FIP have each risen as well, but Johnson has counteracted that in part by increasing his strikeouts per nine innings from a poor 5.37 to a better 7.25 mark. Unfortunately for Johnson, he’s been hit hard in May — blowing three games in a row at once point — and he’s the only pitcher with at least 10 shutdowns who also has as many as five meltdowns, a very poor percentage. By comparison, Johnson led baseball with 46 shutdowns last season, but did so with just three meltdowns all year long.

If there was a commonly perceived “loser” of the 2012-13 baseball offseason, other than perhaps the suddenly budget-conscious New York Yankees, it was almost certainly seen to be the Texas Rangers.

General manager Jon Daniels watched Mike Adams, Ryan Dempster, Josh Hamilton, Mike Napoli and Koji Uehara all leave as free agents while failing to land either Zack Greinke orJustin Upton, two big-ticket names the team was connected to for months. The only real additions the Rangers made were one-year deals to past-their-prime veterans like Lance Berkman and A.J. Pierzynski, all while dealing with the increasingly visible off-the-field distraction surrounding team icon Nolan Ryan’s future with the club.

Championships aren’t often won in December, but even when the games got rolling, Texas faced an additional concern. Opening Day starter Matt Harrison, who received a $55 million extension in January, dropped his first two starts before being lost to back surgery. He has since undergone a second procedure, and his return date remains uncertain.

After all that, where do the Rangers stand now? With the best record in baseball and the only team with more than a 1½-game lead in its division. In what was expected by many to be the most competitive division race in the game, Texas is a surprising 6½ games ahead of the Seattle Mariners, and they’re doing it with a well-rounded team. They have the third-best wOBA and the fourth-stingiest FIP on the mound. They are, according to ESPN’s Playoff Odds, the team with the best chances of reaching the postseason with a percentage of 88.2.

So much for a lousy winter, apparently.

Balanced offense

Although Texas didn’t bring in many new faces, all the departures meant that only four of the 10 men penciled into manager Ron Washington’s 2012 Opening Day lineup were there again when this season kicked off. Despite the turnover, the offense in particular really hasn’t missed a beat.

This year’s Rangers are getting contributions in some amount from nearly every part of the lineup, and that’s not something that could be said about last year’s group, which gave more than 1,100 plate appearances to players who didn’t even manage 0.0 WAR (more than half of which were to Michael Young, who was one of the worst players in baseball last season). As we complete the first quarter of 2013, only struggling left fielder David Murphyand backup catcher Geovany Soto fit that description, and that’s a big reason this club has yet to lose more than two consecutive games.

It’s that kind of offensewide production that has allowed the Rangers to weather the losses of Hamilton and Napoli and slower-than-usual starts from core stars Elvis Andrus and Adrian Beltre. Beyond that, it certainly doesn’t hurt that the team is getting star-level production from a few places that weren’t quite providing it last season.

At second base, Ian Kinsler struggled through a down year in 2012, ending the season with a career-worst .327 wOBA and fueling rumors he might be asked to move to first base or the outfield to make room for top prospect Jurickson Profar. All Kinsler has done in response is put up a stellar line of .302/.369/.500, good for a .378 wOBA that currently makes him the most productive offensive second baseman in baseball.

Kinsler remains at second in part because the previously inconsistent Mitch Moreland has come into his own to establish himself as the team’s regular first baseman. Moreland’s nine homers are already more than halfway to his previous season high of 16, and his success isn’t even due to the small-sample-size batted-ball luck that we often see at this point in the season — his .311 BABIP is barely off the .307 mark he had last year. Perhaps as importantly, he’s finally begun to show some amount of success on the road and against lefty pitching, problems that had plagued him for most of his career.

Moreland’s secure hold on first base continues a domino effect that allows Berkman to take the majority of playing time at designated hitter, where his .377 wOBA is a massive improvement over the poor .297 mark Young provided last year. In right field, Nelson Cruz — finally healthy, though that always seems to be a temporary condition — already has 11 homers and a robust .356 wOBA.

Defense and Darvish

While we all like to focus on offense, run prevention is just as important in terms of winning games, and the Rangers have found improvement with the gloves as well. When we looked at the Rangers in this space in January, there was cause for optimism that no matter what losing Hamilton, Napoli and Young might do to the offense, subtracting the three poorly regarded defenders should help support the team’s pitching.

As you might expect on a team that’s turning more balls into outs, a rotation that had depth concerns even before losing Harrison is performing better. As a group, last year’s Texas rotation had a 4.30 ERA. That number is down to 3.56 this season, even though the Rangers have had to replace Harrison and the injuredColby Lewis with rookies Justin Grimm and Nick Tepesch.

Of course, the way Yu Darvish is pitching, it might not matter if he had a defense behind him at all. No starting pitcher in baseball tops his 12.76 K/9 mark; in fact, no pitcher even comes within a full strikeout of that, with Max Scherzer trailing at 11.57. Darvish’s ascension into a full-fledged ace has somewhat masked the rebound of Derek Holland, who has managed to limit the homers and walks that had hurt him in the past to put up a 2.36 FIP.

Can they keep this pace up in the face of more bad news? Starter Alexi Ogando, who had already been struggling with decreased velocity this season, went on the disabled list on Thursday with right biceps tendinitis. He’ll be replaced by 25-year-old Josh Lindblom, the return from Philadelphia in the Young deal, who will make his starting debut after more than 100 games of major league experience in the bullpen.

That makes for a trio of inexperienced starters behind Darvish and Holland, but for once, good news is on the way. Lewis has been making rehab starts as he returns from elbow surgery and could be ready by June; he’ll be followed by former Kansas City Royals starJoakim Soria in July and ex-closer Neftali Feliz later in the season, as each recuperates from Tommy John surgery. If Daniels decides that he needs to add a starter like David Price or bat like Giancarlo Stanton before the deadline, few teams can match the strength of a farm system that boasts talent like Profar and third baseman Mike Olt.

Although the Rangers have done more than erase the memories of a seemingly subpar winter, they need only to look back at 2012 to know that the only day when being in first place matters is the final day of the season. So far, they’re doing a great job of making everyone who wrote them off in December look foolish.

Through the first 30 games of this season, the Washington Nationals found themselves sitting right at .500. That’d be a fine start for a lot of teams, but not for Davey Johnson’s club. After winning 98 games in 2012, general manager Mike Rizzo added starter Dan Haren, closer Rafael Soriano and outfielder Denard Span to a roster that was already bursting with talent. Consider as well that they’d get to reap the benefits of full seasons from Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg, and it’s not difficult to see why the Nationals were the consensus choice to win the National League East, and seen as a potential World Series winner as well.

Though they’d won three in a row through Wednesday after dropping to .500, things still haven’t fully come together yet for the team, as it treads water behind the Atlanta Braves in the division. If you ask the average fan why that is, in all likelihood he or she would reply “Strasburg.” Most of the attention so far has been focused on the struggles of the Nationals’ young ace, as he’s battled inconsistency and right forearm tightness that at one point put his availability in question; in the seven games Strasburg has started, Washington has won just two. But for all the concern over his situation, he’s still struck out nearly a man per inning and has an adequate-if-not-quite-electric 3.45 ERA. Overall, Washington’s pitching has been fine, with a total 3.69 FIP that places the Nationals within the top 10 in baseball.

While Strasburg demands the lion’s share of the attention, the problem in Washington isn’t on the mound. It’s at the plate, where a group (excluding pitchers) that had a .331weighted on-base average last year (eighth-best in baseball) has now tumbled all the way to .302, better than only the woeful Seattle Mariners, Chicago White Sox and Miami Marlins.

That would be a surprising drop for any team, but it’s especially shocking for a roster that returned six of eight starters, cleared anchors from last year like Rick Ankiel, Mark DeRosa,Jesus Flores and Xavier Nady, and has seen Harper blossom into arguably the most dangerous young hitter in baseball.

Johnson and Rizzo came out of the winter expecting to enjoy a productive offense — but so far, it just isn’t working.

What’s gone wrong?

It’s difficult to have a hitter as dynamic as Harper (.437 wOBA) and still rank so poorly as a team, and the only way that can really happen is if nearly the entire group around him is struggling. As you’d expect, that’s exactly what’s happened so far. Ten different Nationals had at least 100 plate appearances last year, and just two have managed to equal or better their wOBA from last season — Harper and catcher Kurt Suzuki.

Nowhere is this trend more noticeable than in the infield, where first baseman Adam LaRoche, second baseman Danny Espinosa, shortstop Ian Desmond and third baseman Ryan Zimmerman combined to form one of the better quartets in baseball last season. Between them, they combined for an even 100 home runs in 2012, and three of the four — Espinosa excluded — finished among the top seven at their positions in wOBA.

This year? Of the four, only Desmond is providing anything close to positive value, and even he has seen his wOBA drop from .362 to .326 thanks to a strikeout percentage that has jumped five points and a walk percentage that has been cut in half. His double-play partner, Espinosa, has been even worse — it’s difficult to paint a .200/.238/.379 line in a positive light — and while a .226 batting average on balls in play indicates poor luck that should even out, a line-drive rate down from last year shows that part of it is that he’s simply not hitting the ball as well. It might be as simple as pointing to the shoulder and wrist injuries he’s dealt with so far, but those are also difficult problems for a hitter to play through with success.

Yet it’s really on the infield corners where the serious problems are. LaRoche had one of the best years of his career in 2012, gaining some MVP support as he hit a career-high 33 homers to go with a .361 wOBA. So far this year, he’s been nothing short of a disaster, dropping nearly 100 points off his wOBA to go with an ugly .184/.283/.306 line.

LaRoche was hampered for part of April by a sore back, and he’s been hurt even more by a .238 BABIP. (You’ll see this is a recurring theme for the early-season Nationals.) LaRoche probably won’t repeat last year’s success, but at least in his case there’s a lot to like about what’s to come. He’s been more selective than ever, swinging at fewer pitches than in any full season of his career, and the balls he has gone after have led to a career-high 25 percent line-drive rate. We’ve been able to see the effects of that already, because after an atrocious April, he’s turned it on in May, reaching base 13 times in the first six games.

Zimmerman also missed time in April due to injury, but unlike most of his teammates, BABIP isn’t a huge issue for him. He’s just been flat-out bad, striking out nearly a quarter of the time, which would be by far a career high if he keeps it up all season long. His swing rates are largely unchanged, but he’s just not making contact as he once did, and when he does hit the ball, it ends up on the ground more than half the time.

While his April injury was to his hamstring, he’s also coming off offseason shoulder surgery. As we’ve seen with Adrian Gonzalez and Matt Kemp recently, shoulder woes can often affect a hitter’s production long after the procedure. That goes double for his once-excellent defense, which has seen throwing problems so serious it has raised questions of when — not even if — he’ll move off third base to first to make room for prospect Anthony Rendon.

In fact — and not to completely terrify Washington fans — the Nationals’ offense as a whole looks surprisingly like another highly touted group that’s struggled to live up to expectations. That would be the flailing Toronto Blue Jays, profiled here by Insider Dave Cameron last week.

The two offenses are very similar, and being compared to a team that has more losses than anyone in baseball other than Miami and the Houston Astros is not exactly what the Nats had in mind headed into the season.

They’re in luck

Fortunately for the Nats, their prospects are brighter than those north of the border. Unlike the Jays, who have more than likely already cost themselves a shot at the playoffs as they sit in last place in the American League East, Harper and the pitching staff have more than kept the Nationals in the race. They’ve bought time for the offense to come alive, and that might be all the team needs, given that it’s incredibly unlikely that a group with this much talent is going to be saddled with such a poor BABIP all season long.

While it’s not as cut and dry an answer as many would like to hear, this does seem to be largely a result of some really atrocious batted ball luck, along with some health concerns that are keeping players like Zimmerman, Espinosa and the constantly banged-up Jayson Werth at less than 100 percent.

Washington isn’t likely to get back to last season’s offensive levels, and that’s partly by design as the club essentially swapped the extraneous Mike Morse for the defensively-talented Span. But the Nats might not need to regain their 2012 offensive form — even a simple bounce back to their established normals should be enough to support Harper and a rotation that features Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez and the underrated Jordan Zimmermann. Considering how lousy their batted-ball luck has been so far, that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable expectation.

In most years, seeing that the Boston Red Sox had the best record in the American League East and the top run differential in baseball at the end of April would come as little surprise. After all, the Red Sox have won two World Series titles in the last decade and annually find themselves in playoff contention.

But 2013 isn’t most years, because rarely are the Red Sox coming off a season in which they lost 93 games and suffered national embarrassment on a regular basis. Most observers expected the Red Sox to rebound somewhat from last year’s debacle — if only because key players would return to health and Bobby Valentine would be anywhere other than Boston — it’s safe to say that few expected the club would be among the class of baseball after the first month.

While the Red Sox have benefited thus far from the improved health of Jacoby Ellsbury andDustin Pedroia and the additions of Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino on offense, it’s pitching that is truly driving the turnaround. Last year’s collection ended up with the fourth-worst ERA in baseball; through the first month of 2013, they’d allowed the fifth-fewest runs in the game. Even more notable, however, is how they’re getting there, because this crew is striking out hitters at a record pace. After Jon Lester and Junichi Tazawa teamed to punch out seven Toronto Blue Jays to finish off April on Tuesday night, the Boston staff stood at a combined 9.94 strikeouts per nine innings.

That strikeout pace is more than two and a half batters more per game than the 2012 Red Sox had, which would be an enormous increase. Not only that, it would be the highest team rate in baseball history if they were somehow able to maintain it for the entire season. How have they managed to increase their strikeout rate so much?

It’s the pitchers

This may seem obvious — after all, the pitchers are the ones collecting the strikeouts — but there’s a lot more to it than that. The roster turnover during and after the 2012 season rid the Red Sox of several pitch-to-contact types, most notably Aaron Cook, who struck out just 20 batters in 94 innings. That’s not a typo. In fact, only one pitcher in the last 60 years threw as many innings as Cook and struck out fewer. (Here’s your chance to take a bow, Larry Pashnick of the 1982 Detroit Tigers.) The Red Sox also bade farewell to Scott Atchison(6.31 K/9 in 51.1 IP) and Josh Beckett (6.64 K/9 in 127.1 IP), while banishing Daniel Bard(5.76 K/9 in 59.1 IP) to the minors after a failed attempt to convert him into a starter.

The departed have largely been replaced by newcomers like Ryan Dempster (12.9 K/9 in 30.0 IP) and Koji Uehara (10.13 K/9 in 10.2 IP). While Uehara’s performance is largely in line with his career norms, the 36-year-old Dempster has been a revelation, striking out hitters at a pace he’s never come close to before. Dempster has always maintained decent K rates, but pitchers of his age rarely experience and then maintain such an uptick in performance, but at least in this case there’s evidence of improvement to point to rather than simply “it’s just a small sample size.”

Dempster has had an effective splitter for several years, but this year he’s throwing it more than ever, up to 18 percent of the time, while relying less on his fastball. That’s an out pitch when hitters chase it, but it’s also one that rarely ends up in the strike zone, which may also explain why Dempster’s walk rate is higher than it’s been since moving back into the rotation in 2008. As Jeff Sullivan recently went into great detail about at FanGraphs, Dempster has also slightly shifted his position on the rubber and his pitch location over the plate, largely avoiding the inner half entirely. You shouldn’t put money on Dempster retaining a K/9 date north of 12 all season, but there’s reason to believe he can sustain at least some of this improvement.

Nearly as important as the newcomers is the improvement from those who remained, and that starts with Clay Buchholz. The former top prospect struggled badly in 2012, ending the year with a 4.65 FIP and a 6.32 K/9. He has turned that around in a big way in 2013, striking out 47 in his first 44.2 innings while allowing a mere five earned runs. Andrew Bailey, Felix Doubront, and Andrew Miller have each shown improved strikeout skill as well this year, which in Bailey’s case can be attributed in part to better health.

It’s the catchers and coaches

In addition to the big-name items like Dempster, shortstop Stephen Drew, reliever Joel Hanrahan, Napoli and Victorino, Boston gave a two-year contract to 36-year-old backstopDavid Ross, coming off four seasons backing up Brian McCann in Atlanta. Ross earned a reputation for being one of the better backup catchers in baseball on the strength of his .816 OPS as a Brave, but his value goes far beyond the offensive stat line.

The science of tracking pitch framing — that is, quantifying the positive or negative effect a catcher can have on having borderline pitches being called strikes based on how he receives the ball — is still in its infancy, yet Ross consistently ranks among the better catchers in the game in the studies that have been run. Backstop partner Jarrod Saltalamacchia is considered solid, but Ryan Lavarnway and Kelly Shoppach — who started 67 games behind the plate last year but are not with the big-league club this year — each grade out poorly.

That subtle upgrade helps all the pitchers, of course, but Ross may also be responsible for some of Dempster’s success. Catching a bullpen session from his new teammate in spring training, he offered Dempster the advice to try to throw all of his pitches from the same arm slot, minimizing the chance that hitters may be tipped off to what pitch was coming. Dempster acquiesced, and the data bear out the difference; his pitches are coming out far more consistently than they used to, and the veteran pitcher is off to one of the best starts of his career.

Beyond the impact Ross has brought, new manager John Farrell and pitching coach Juan Nieves deserve credit as well. Farrell, a veteran of eight big league seasons on the mound, and Nieves, who pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers before injuring his arm at 23, have tinkered with the release points of Buchholz, Doubront and prospect Allen Webster. Buchholz and Doubront have each shown improvement so far, and Webster has become one of the more talked-about pitching prospects in the game.

It’s the league

When we noted above that Boston’s 9.94 K/9 through April would be the highest team rate in history if kept up over an entire season, that was true. However, it’s worth pointing out that the second-highest rate ever is this year’s Detroit Tigers, with 9.79, and the eighth-best ever is the current Kansas City Royals staff at 8.51, so you can probably see where this is going. The top 40 pitching strikeout seasons have all come since the turn of the century, and that’s no surprise, because it’s a well-established fact that today’s hitters whiff far more than their ancestors did. (As Buster Olney noted, the top eight months as far as strikeouts go in the history of baseball are the last eight months of play.)

However, the 2013 American League is taking that to a new high. Last year, all AL pitchers struck out 7.41 batters per nine, which was less than the 7.69 their National League counterparts managed — to be expected, given the weaker lineups NL pitchers face. Yet this year, that number in the AL in April shot up to 7.82, while it actually decreased in the NL to 7.57.

Why? It’s likely oversimplifying to pin the swing on this reason alone, but it’s hard to ignore the one huge difference between 2012 and 2013 in baseball: the dreadful Houston Astros — on pace to be the most strikeout-prone offense in the history of the game with a whopping 26.3 percent strikeout rate through April — shifted leagues to the AL. The Red Sox had the benefit of playing Houston for a four-game set in Boston in late April; they stuck out 41 Astros during the series.

The Red Sox probably aren’t going to end the season as the all-time strikeout leaders, because it’s hard to see pitchers like Dempster maintaining quite that level of performance, and we’re of course dealing with small sample sizes for every pitcher discussed. Still, there’s a lot to like about this staff. Last season’s disaster was less about the narrative of “fried chicken and beer” than it was about poor health and indifferent coaching, and the 2013 Red Sox seem better situated to succeed than last year’s version in every regard.

There’s a pretty obvious trend happening these days in baseball, and it’s that teams simply refuse to let top homegrown talent reach the open market. This is especially true when it comes to young pitching, where Matt Cain, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, and Justin Verlander have all each signed extensions for at least $100 million since the beginning of the 2012 season. Clayton Kershaw, expected by most to be retained by the Los Angeles Dodgers before he reaches free agency after 2014, may soon top them all with baseball’s first $200 million pitcher contact.

That’s a whole lot of money given to keep some of the brightest pitching in the game right where it is. And considering the ever-increasing displays of wealth, it might be understandable that the March news out of St. Louis that the Cardinals had extended Adam Wainwright seemed to fly under the radar. After all, his new deal guarantees him a relatively paltry $97.5 million over five seasons starting in 2014, perhaps less than half of what Kershaw is expected to get.

Yet as we head into the final week of the first month of the season, it isn’t Kershaw who has been the most dominant pitcher in baseball, nor Verlander, Darvish, or anyone else: it’s Wainwright, who has struck out an astonishing 37 in 37 1/3 innings against just a single walk. Before he walked Washington’s Bryce Harper in the sixth inning of a 2-0 St. Louis win on Tuesday night, he’d become the first pitcher since the 19th century to strike out more than 30 batters before issuing his first walk of the season.

It’s an incredible accomplishment, yet as with his contract extension, few seem to be taking notice.

Quick recovery

Wainwright’s achievements are so impressive not just because of where he is, but because of where he was. On the eve of the 2011 season, Wainwright blew out his right elbow, requiring Tommy John surgery that caused him to miss all of St. Louis’ eventual run to the championship. That he came back at the low end of the usual 12-to-14 month estimate to even make the Opening Day rotation in 2012 was nice enough, but taken at face value, his relatively pedestrian 14-13 record and 3.94 ERA looked like a once-dominant pitcher struggling to return to form after a serious injury.

In truth, it’s really yet another example of why top-level pitching stats like won-loss record and ERA can be more than a little misleading.

As seen in the chart at right, Wainwright’s important peripherals — strikeouts, walks, and home runs per nine innings — were nearly identical in his post-surgery year as they were in his last two healthy seasons, when he had two top-three NL Cy Young finishes. Unlike most pitchers recovering from Tommy John surgery, who often struggle with placing the ball even if velocity has returned, Wainwright’s control remained exactly where he’d left it.

If Wainwright did have any post-surgery hangover in 2012, it lasted all of eight starts. After a 7-5 loss in San Francisco on May 17, Wainwright had lost six of his first eight outings with an ugly 5.77 ERA and an uglier .298/.358/.497 batting line against. On May 22, he shut out the San Diego Padres while holding them to just four hits; including that game, he allowed just a .294 on-base percentage along with a 144/36 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his remaining 24 starts. Even with the slow start to his first post-injury season, there’s not a single National League starter — not Kershaw, not Stephen Strasburg, not Cliff Lee — who can boast a better FIP since the start of 2012 than Wainwright’s 2.78. Only Hernandez, at 2.74, tops him in the American League.

If anything, the new Wainwright, boasting a four-seam fastball he rarely threw earlier in his career, is more dangerous than the one who was one of the top pitchers in the league before his elbow gave out. No, he isn’t going to maintain a strikeout rate which is 37 times his walk rate for the entire season, but through five starts — and all necessary warnings about “small sample size” do apply here — Wainwright has increased his swinging-strike percentage to 11.1 percent. That’s not only an excellent rate, but it is well above his previous high as a starting pitcher, 9.6 percent in 2010.

Major boost

For the Cardinals, Wainwright’s return to form has not only been welcomed, it’s been imperative. Their pitching staff is deep in talent, but it was also nearly as deep in questions headed into the season. Wainwright’s longtime rotation running mate Chris Carpenter was shut down early in spring with a shoulder injury and has likely thrown his last pitch, while lefty Jaime Garcia missed much of last year with arm concerns of his own. Adding to that, reliable Kyle Lohse defected to the rival Milwaukee Brewers, while the bullpen has been in turmoil ever since closer Jason Motte went down with an elbow injury. In large part due to Wainwright — as well as emerging young star Shelby Miller — the Cardinals can boast a major-league best 2.35 rotation ERA.

Wainwright turns 32 years old in August, making him older than any of the other starters who scored huge extensions, and he’s also got the elbow surgery in his recent past, so it’s not difficult to see why his deal wasn’t quite as financially earth-shattering. Yet for the last year, Wainwright has not only been at or near his pre-surgery levels, he’s again been one of the best pitchers in baseball. The Cardinals got their man for tens of millions less than similar pitchers close to free agency, and so far, he’s making that investment look like a wonderful decision.

Opening Day was a festive occasion for Los Angeles Dodgers fans this year, and not just for the usual reasons. Spectators streamed into grand old Dodger Stadium, fresh off a winter renovation worth $100 million, content in the knowledge that for the first time since 2003 they would be watching a team that wasn’t owned by the despised and departed Frank McCourt. New stars Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford dotted a lineup that just a year before had included low-budget placeholders like James Loney and Juan Rivera, as the Dodgers welcomed the defending champion San Francisco Giants to town.

By the end of the day, the Dodgers stood victorious with a 4-0 win, but the score hardly told the story. Homegrown ace Clayton Kershaw had not only thrown a complete game shutout, he’d taken matters into his own hands to break a scoreless tie by hitting his first career homer, a shot to center off George Kontos in the eighth. No pitcher had pulled off the same feat — a shutout and a homer on Opening Day — in six decades.

The young lefty had somehow found a new way to impress, and if Dodger fans take such feats for granted, they might be forgiven. Their ace has been so consistently excellent that even a rare poor outing, like Wednesday night’s loss to San Diego, comes as something of a surprise. Before getting touched for five runs (three earned) by the Padres, Kershaw had gone 17 straight starts having allowed three runs or fewer; it’s become almost expected to assume he’ll dominate at this point.

Yet to merely place him among the ranks one of the greatest pitching talents in the game today is almost an injustice, because the same could be said about David Price, Stephen Strasburg, Justin Verlander or a half-dozen other members of the true pitching elite. With every start, Kershaw is continuing to lay the groundwork for a career that is already on the path to baseball immortality.

When Kershaw struck out San Diego first baseman Yonder Alonso with a letter-high fastball in the second inning Wednesday night, he became just the 16th pitcher in big league history to strike out 1,000 hitters before the end of his age-25 season. The list is a who’s who of pitching royalty, including seven Hall of Famers — Bert Blyleven, Don Drysdale, Bob Feller, Catfish Hunter, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson and Hal Newhouser — one active pitcher well on his way (Felix Hernandez) and one derailed only by off-field issues (Dwight Gooden).

If Kershaw maintains his current strikeout pace, he’ll end the season with around 1,215 career punchouts. That would not only give him the ninth-most in history by age 25, it would make him the second-most prolific lefty pitcher by that age, behind only former Dodgers great Fernando Valenzuela.

As impressive as that is, Kershaw ranks even higher on the list of pitchers who simply do not allow hits. In the history of the game, dating to the 19th century, exactly four pitchers have thrown as many innings as Kershaw has (972 1/3) through their age-25 season and allowed fewer than seven hits per nine innings (see table).

Ed Reulbach and Johnson made their debuts more than a century ago in a game that scarcely resembled what we see today. “Sudden Sam” McDowell’s strikeout prowess was perhaps matched only by his complete inability to know where the ball was headed when it left his hand.

As one might expect, standing among legends in strikeouts and limiting hits puts Kershaw high on the most notable list of all: run prevention. ERA+ is a simple yet effective way to measure runs allowed for pitchers from different eras, because it’s adjusted to include park factors and the league average. A score of 100 would be exactly league-average for a given year; each point above that is equal to 1 percent better than average.

Kershaw is one of only three in the last 60 years to post a career ERA (with 970 innings pitched through age 25) at least 40 percent better than the league average. Standing with Roger Clemens and Tom Seaver as his only contemporaries in that time is more than a little impressive, given that both ended their careers in the conversation for “best pitcher ever.”

If we shift our view to more advanced statistics using fielding independent pitching (FIP), the story remains the same except that more all-time greats enter the picture. Narrowing the scope to post-World War II play, just 10 pitchers top Kershaw’s 3.01 FIP at this point in his career. Again, we see Blyleven, Clemens, Gooden and Seaver, but now we also find Steve Carlton and Don Sutton — Hall of Famers both. With rare exceptions, if a pitcher has accomplished as much at this age as Kershaw has, it means that something very, very special is happening.

That truth was displayed when Kershaw won the NL Cy Young Award in 2011, becoming not only the youngest winner since Gooden in 1985, but one of just 13 hurlers to win the unofficial Pitching Triple Crown — leading the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts — since the Cy Young came into existence in 1956. He followed that with an equally outstanding 2012, which arguably should have earned him back-to-back awards, losing to R.A. Dickey largely on the strength of the knuckleballer’s fantastic narrative.

Five years ago, a 19-year-old Kershaw shocked legendary broadcaster Vin Scully — who has seen a few things in his time, to put it lightly — with a spring training curveball so vicious that Scully dubbed it “Public Enemy No. 1.” Even at the time, that began comparisons to Dodger Hall of Fame lefty Sandy Koufax, an absolutely unfair burden to place on a player less than two years out of a Texas high school.

Since then, Kershaw has done nothing but meet and exceed those expectations, and at some point in the near future, the Dodgers are almost certainly going to sign their ace to a long-term deal that will likely make him the first $200 million pitcher in baseball history. That’s great news for Dodger fans, but it’s good news for baseball as well; with every start, Kershaw continues on a trajectory that might end with his living among the all-time greats. Unless he happens to be mowing down your favorite team on a given night, it’s worth pausing to admire this kind of performance while it’s right in front of us.

As the summer turned into the stretch run in 2012, the Los Angeles Angels were one of the most dangerous teams in baseball. Albert Pujols had shaken off his early-season troubles, Mike Trout had replaced Vernon Wells to establish himself as a legitimate superstar, and midseason acquisition Zack Greinke had joined Dan Haren, Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson to form one of the more intimidating rotation quartets in baseball. From the time the Boston Red Sox came to town Aug. 28 through the end of the season, the Angels won 22 of their final 33 games, the second-highest winning percentage in the big leagues.

Never one to sit still, owner Arte Moreno opened his wallet over the winter to once again add the best hitter available on the market, enriching outfielder Josh Hamilton by $133 million. Hamilton joined an offense that already had the third-highest team weighted on-base average in baseball last year without him. Considering the two teams ahead of the Angels on that list, the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers, each suffered serious departures this winter, the Angels could have entered the season rightfully expecting one of the most potent offenses in baseball.

But despite the embarrassment of riches both on offense and in the checkbook, 2013 couldn’t have started off worse for the club in almost every way. The Angels might be rich, and they might be talented, but no amount of payroll hides the fact that this team is facing some serious trouble.

Lethargic start

After getting swept at home by the Oakland Athletics, the Angels head into their weekend series with the Houston Astros with the worst record in the AL West (2-7). Yes, worse than the Astros.

Hamilton spent most of his first week embroiled in off-field controversy surrounding his return to Texas; on the field, coming off the highest seasonal swinging-strike percentage since the stat was first tracked in 2002, he struck out in 10 of his first 20 plate appearances and still had just four hits through Tuesday. Pujols has at least shown power with two home runs, but he has admitted to being somewhat limited by ongoing issues with plantar fasciitis.

It gets worse on the mound. Weaver is now out for at least a month with a fractured left elbow, and there were serious concerns about his performance even before that. Wilson, the club’s other big-ticket addition along with Pujols prior to 2012, went from a .200/.297/.275 (BA/OBP/SLG) line against in the first half of his debut season as an Angel to .275/.351/.456 in the second half before having offseason elbow surgery. Thus far, he has done little to calm the team’s fears, allowing 15 baserunners in 11 innings. Behind them, Greinke, Haren and Ervin Santana have moved on, leaving the new-look rotation a patchwork affair.

Now, if you’re thinking the second week of April is far too soon to write off a team, you’re absolutely right. Hamilton long has been known to be a streaky hitter who will get his numbers in bunches, and opposing pitchers will tremble all season at a quartet of Hamilton, Pujols, Trout and Mark Trumbo. No matter what else happens, the offense alone ought to keep the Angels competitive.

Mound woes

The pitching, however, is problematic, and what was a tenuous situation even before Weaver was injured has gone downhill quickly. No Angels starter pitched more than six innings in the team’s first seven games, and now they have to get by with Garrett Richards rather than Weaver, who is arguably one of the most irreplaceable starters in the game simply because of the fact that the rest of the rotation is hardly what it once was.

In place of Haren, who had a 3.58 ERA in 13 second-half starts, there’s former Mariner Jason Vargas, who has a career 3.38 ERA in Safeco Field and a 5.12 mark everywhere else. He gave up five runs in 5 2/3 innings against the A’s in Thursday’s loss.

Rather than Greinke, there’s Tommy Hanson, undeniably talented but with an extensive recent history of arm trouble. Losing the declining Santana is less of a concern, but Joe Blanton in his spot is hardly anyone’s idea of a difference-maker.

It’s of course the issues with Weaver that are the most troubling, because it’s actually his right arm that might be more concerning than his fractured left one. Weaver’s fastball velocity has been declining since the middle of last season, and it bottomed out at 85 mph in his last start before he got hurt. It’s not unrelated that his first-half ERA of 2.97 last year increased to a lousy 4.56 in the second half; in 11 innings so far in 2013, Weaver had walked and struck out an even six apiece, neither of which should provide Angels fans with much confidence.

Unfortunately for general manager Jerry Dipoto, the options available to him to improve his roster are limited. In years past, the Angels had no problem going after the big arm they needed during the season, adding Haren in 2010 and Greinke in 2012. But after years of moves like that — those two trades alone cost them quality prospects Patrick Corbin, Jean Segura and Tyler Skaggs — and losing draft picks for signing high-profile free agents, the farm system is barren, ranking dead last in Keith Law’s organizational rankings. Only one of Law’s top seven Angels prospects is a pitcher, and Nick Maronde might need more seasoning after spending much of last season in the high Class A California League.

There’s plenty of time left in the season, and a team with this offensive core won’t go quietly. But in a division with contending teams in Oakland and Texas, along with the improving Seattle Mariners, this club should know the danger of a slow start more than most — last year’s 6-14 start put the Angels in a hole they never could recover from, no matter how well they played at the end.

That’s a problem given that both the Athletics and Rangers have won six of their first eight, and the Angels can’t count on a new Trout arriving to save the day this season. For an expensive team with high expectations, the Angels have put themselves in a spot that might be difficult to come back from.